If anyone else talks about paywalls I’m going to punch them

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: January 29, 2010

No industry can be as self important as the newspaper business. OK, maybe TV. And, I suppose, if politics is a business (which it all to frequently appears to be) then that deserves a mention, too. But journalism – a trade designed to make a mountain out of a molehill – has a habit of getting itself in the headlines, often to its detriment. Evidence for this claim is hardly difficult to find. From the well-paid columnists who tell us about their not-very-interesting lives, to the current debate about the New York Times’s decision to charge customers for using its website from January 2011.
This news has been greeted in some quarters as common sense, and in others with nothing short of derision. In particular, online gurus have lined up to have a pop at the venerable ‘Gray Lady’ of American news. In fact, it has been a little like watching the judges of American Idol, with the New York Times cast as the feckless wannabe and Jeff Jarvis as Simon Cowell.
Now, if the words of one New York Times exec is to be believed (thanks to Jay Rosen), it seems the paywall is a paywall only if you are actually going to sit down and read the online product properly (who does that?). Those who arrive through the millions of links that in turn benefit the Times’s standing on the web will arrive free – no doubt thanked for their valued Google juice. Since subscribers, who might by one estimation account for 70 per cent of the small number who will stay long enough to pay, would be handed access gratis, it suddenly seems like less of a paywall. This might be the greatest double bluff in online newspaper history (or is that the only double bluff in online newspaper history): the NY Times had been paid-for, then it was free and now it is going to be paid-for, but also free. Anyone who could get their head round this would no doubt be given a subscription forthwith and asked to join the board.
There is, of course, a little more method to the NY Times’s madness than might immediately meet the eye. Firstly, the vast majority of clicks on the site will be from people who won’t under any circumstances pay. They will visit – through Google or through links from other sites – but their time perusing the NYT’s content will be brief at best. These are the folk who Murdoch hates, because they pore sweaty-browed over his finely rendered, beautifully polished and expensive prose, but provide nothing (either by directly paying or as customers to whom he can advertise). Because they won’t stick around, particularly if they’re asked to cough up (imagine Rupert as red-faced shopkeeper chasing them out of the store after they’ve thumbed through his comics), there’s no point trying to make ‘em. Frankly, this is the hardest lesson for newspapers: lots of people just won’t pay. All they offer is the promise of links, something Jarvis has pointed out offers a different form of value. But some, you see, will. It will be a tiny number, probably, and mostly made up of people who have an affection for the product, who stick with it and believe in it. But, for the NY Times, that number doesn’t have to be that big. And, what’s more, you can advertise to them. Maybe you can even advertise much more directly to them (if you know their tastes, their habits, their interests). So, with these, er, win-win benefits, it’s presumably considered to be worth a shot. Whether it works is another matter and, frankly, I don’t care.
That’s because all this talk of paywalls is something of a red herring. Newspapers feel they need to charge for online content because it appears to cost them so much. After all, the readers are deserting the paper product for their free online offering, just as the advertisers are. But what are a newspaper’s costs? Principally, as it happens, the production and distribution of newspapers. And is anyone talking about this at the moment? While we all blow hot and cold on paywalls, newspapers seem to have a far bigger problem to deal with: the newspaper itself. When I say the newspaper I don’t just mean the paper, the print and its distribution – although this is an expensive business in itself. I mean the advertising sales teams, the support staff, the big offices, the related human resources costs, the insurance, and everything else that has been sucked into the business of making and distributing news. What will happen to all this when, as will I think inevitably happen, it simply is too costly to bear?
It’s a much more important argument and goes to the heart of news production, its merits and its values. Paywalls don’t – and that’s why I’m so fed up with all this pointless hot air. Some will work and some won’t, it’ll depend on whether you’ve got something people can’t get elsewhere – i.e. it’s common sense – and that’s really all there is to it.

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How to make news playable

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: December 11, 2009

As part of my online journalism studies I have to come up with an ‘experimental portfolio’. This, according to Paul Bradshaw, our course leader, is to explore around the fringes of online journalism knowledge. As a former sub editor, I’ve never been comfortable with uncertainty. I like things to have been written down many, many times before I try them. When my parents used to take me and their other children for walks, I was the sort of kid who’d ask to see a map before setting out. This has made the whole process rather more of a challenge for me than I was hoping it would be. And, to be honest, I’ve been struggling to find an idea for my experimental project that I like.
But, on the back of my last post – which finished with the line ‘Haven’t you got to be prepared to risk making a fool out of yourself to do something interesting?’, (the sort of logic trap one should never find oneself writing) – I’ve resolved to put my own reservations aside and try to be taken by inspiration.
Yesterday, my fellow classmates and I were lucky enough to meet Paul Daniel. It’s worth reiterating that that’s Daniel, not Daniels. He’s a magician of sorts, our Paul, but he wasn’t accompanied by Debbie McGee and the only rabbits he pulled from hats were entirely metaphorical. Paul is an expert in Yahoo! Pipes. Over the course of a couple of hours, he took us through the basics (and not so basic) of using this extremely powerful and very engaging tool. It was an eye opener for me, as I’ve tried to use Pipes before and ended up losing patience before I managed to work anything out worth sharing with the world.
What our little Pipes session taught me, I suppose, was that the future of the web and the future of news really are playable. By that I mean manipulation by the consumer is absolutely key to content use (apologies to people who’d already worked this out!). Pipes can allow ordinary Joes like me to engage with all sorts of different forms of data and choose how we use that data (if they pay proper attention to people like Paul and then go home and watch the videos). This got me thinking: what if news websites were playable – a little like Pipes, but perhaps without the code? At the moment, most content is viewable and you can respond to it (moan about it, rate it, send it to other people, etc.) But this is on the low side of interaction. If there was a high side of interaction it would be about peoples’ ability to make their own personal decisions about content and actually affect that content and represent it themselves.
If people can muck about with your content, use it as they wish and enjoy it in different ways, then they’re more likely to use it again (and even stay on your site). Better still, you can learn all sorts of things about that content and how it is being used that people might find useful commercially.
So, what does all that mean in terms of my experimental project? Well, it means I’m trying to find a good playable piece of journalism. I’m obviously looking for examples of what other people have done and trying to come up with a different idea that I can quickly work out (and present online) without too much of a struggle. Ideally, I’d like to create something that is able to produce its own data (to prove my own point about learning from interaction).
So far, the only achievable idea I’ve come up with is hardly that experimental. I wondered whether I could collect a load of pictures from flickr of landmarks in Birmingham, set them next to a map and find a way to allow people to build their own guided tours of the city that can be presented on the site. I haven’t even begun to work out how I’ll do this – and whether it even meets my playable test – but it’s a start…

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Will disco dads save the local newspaper business?

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: December 10, 2009

Roger Green is one of the most important men in local online journalism in Britain. As the boss of Newsquest’s digital division, he’s the head honcho for more than 150 newspaper websites up and down the country. Remarkably, however, Roger isn’t too enamoured with all the fuss about clever-clever technologies and is more than a little fed up with new media partnerships. He also reckons Jeff Jarvis’s collaborative vision of the future won’t work in the dog-eat-dog world of British local journalism.
In a frank and refreshing presentation, the senior manager for Gannett’s UK subsidiary hacked away at a few sacred cows before delivering a stark and fairly simple message to the AOP’s micro local forum, yesterday: ‘either work with us or take us on’. Established businesses, like Newsquest, are operating in a very crowded market and have established brands with loyal readerships, Green told his audience. There isn’t much room for new firms to elbow in on the party and, if they do, they can expect Roger and his pals to make life more than a little uncomfortable. Also, if you do work with Roger, don’t expect to get anything for free. He said his audience ‘wouldn’t believe’ the things people have expected from Newsquest in return for little more than goodwill.
But Green didn’t just land a few blows on new entrants, as he took time to warn his fellow newspaper bosses against falling at the feet of every new technology, with increasing levels of desperation and inversely proportionate levels of understanding. He mocked efforts to force sub-editors to geo-tag business stories and told his peers that they risked looking like ‘disco dads’ as a result of their new-media dalliances.
Sadly, the only thing about Green’s speech that wasn’t a breath of fresh air was its core subject matter: Newsquest’s online strategy. After all his tough words, one might have expected Green to reveal that his company had found the answer his audience was looking for: how to make online local journalism pay. Green admitted that he, like many others, would be waiting to see how competitor Johnston Press did with its experiment in charging for local news content. Meanwhile, Newsquest would have to make do with kicking journalists out of the office and using twitter to improve its conversation with the readers. There are no easy answers, it seems. Even engaging with the newspaper’s audience wasn’t a straightforward task, with Green pointing out that it had proved more than a little tricky to appoint community reporters. Perhaps expecting a local newspaper group to start a revolution is asking too much, but one still might hope that an industry in the grips of a crisis, with its readers dying off – as one of Newsquests’ editors spoke of here – would have a more creative approach to its future. And what’s wrong with a few disco dads anyway? Haven’t you got to be prepared to risk making a fool out of yourself to do something interesting?

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Why blogs can beat traditional news for quality (sometimes)

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: December 2, 2009

In preparation for his appearance in front of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee tomorrow, Paul Bradshaw has attempted to define how new journalism (namely blogs) and traditional media guarantee their quality in quite distinct ways. In doing so, Paul is preparing the ground for a set of questions he expects to be asked by the select committee. His evidence, along with that given by a diverse group of witnesses, will help to shape the government’s response to the worsening state of regional media in this country.
Paul has identified that, while traditional media relies on commercial pressure, codes and regulation for its assurances of quality, new journalism does so through offering a right of reply and transparency.
As he puts it, these can be characterised as pre-publication (in the case of traditional media) and post-publication (in the case of new media).
It strikes me, however, that there is one more important distinction that can be made. In assessing the quality (or reliability) of a story, it is important to consider its proximity to the original source of that story.
This could be seen as similar to the distinctions made by historians, who identify sources as primary, secondary or tertiary. The traditional role of the news journalist was (and remains) a job of narrowing the distance between a primary source (whether that be a news event, eyewitness, or a news maker – such as a politician) and their report (which, in history parlance, would usually be a secondary source). This takes time and often requires the journalist to apply training and experience as well as shared knowledge. This job can also be a fairly unpleasant business. That’s why, when a trainee local reporter returns from her first death knock (approaching directly the family of a recently bereaved person), she’s congratulated for her work.
But a significant distinction between new and old media is that new media can often come directly from the primary source, without any need for an intermediary.
In fact, it might be possible to imagine a future where the public is consistently able to seek a first-hand account of a news event without the help of traditional media. That, in other words, the primary source will be open and available to us all. Local blogs, run by local people, are evidently fantastic primary sources – and the internet has given the means to all sorts of groups (charities, residents’ associations and, notably, well-educated former call girls) to directly publish their experiences. But the existence and availability of social media do not on their own mean all stories will be told directly, or be easily told by others. Clearly, court cases are an example – where the frankly odd, arcane structure and practices of our legal system, in particular the laws governing contempt, make it necessary for a trained intermediary to operate. Furthermore, it may be that our open-source utopia, where all information is available in primary source and easily navigable, will always remain just that. It is much more likely that some primary sources will be available and others won’t. While those sources aren’t available and remain difficult to access there may still be a role for traditional journalism, because, frankly, it’ll still be a full-time job to get at them.
Of course, there are two clear caveats to this. Firstly, a lot of journalism has shied away from doing this primary source, coalface work. Instead, it has become far closer to the definition of a tertiary source, relying on press releases, wire reports and other second-hand material. Secondly, there is no reason why some of the work at getting close to the primary source can’t be shared between large numbers of people all contributing small, but significant amounts of effort – as happens in the open-source software movement.
The first point, of course, is the result of the financial problems facing traditional media, about which much has already been written. The second point, however, I think is more interesting. Is it possible for an open-source concept of news to completely replace professional journalism? I don’t think it is, because open source hasn’t stopped many people from making lots of money out of computer programming. Instead, it changes what journalists do and allows them to develop specialisms and new skills – perhaps in mining information and in manipulating and analysing that information. However, for open-source news to be really effective, it needs free access to information. Many are already familiar with the struggle to open up data sets to the public – such as postcodes, public health, crime and environmental data. But free information doesn’t end with this struggle. In many ways it is only the beginning. Court cases, council proceedings, company reports, government communication and any number of other sources of information are also difficult to access. Making them more available and more consumable is a huge challenge, but it is essential to do so because it is within these sources of information that our news and – by extension – our public interest lies.
The debate that currently exists between the political parties is preoccupied with solving the problem of the death of regional and national media. But this bloody sideshow deflects attention from the real issue, which is in serving the public interest by making available accurate, trustworthy information to all citizens.
Worse still, preservation of these media firms may do more harm to that provision than good. After all, if your commercial survival depends on providing information you may wish to protect it – and prevent others from copying and using it. Such control would not only mean that this information falls into fewer hands, but that it is not treated to as much analysis as it would otherwise do. It would also do incalculable harm to the kinds of new journalism that we are just beginning to see, where basic news is turned into all sorts of ingenious forms of media – whether that be maps, games, or other ‘mash ups’.
If open-source news provides a better model for the dissemination of information in the public interest (by making it more available, more consumable and more engaging), then it should become the goal of legislation. It may seem better in the short term to preserve jobs at existing media groups, but if doing so stifles the provision of information then it would be at far too high a price.
As a journalist myself, it is also worth pointing out that journalists and their interests should remain distinct from the interests of their employers. To confuse these two, as has sometimes been done, would be a terrible trap for legislators to fall into. After all, I don’t imagine anyone cares whether they are working for Trinity Mirror or a new-media start up. They’re much more interested in the quality of their job and how much they are paid for it. Putting a failing industry on life support – either by spending government money on it, or by allowing it to effectively block the development of new competitors – won’t do journalists or journalism any good in the fullness of time.
Sadly, the policies of both the major political parties are muddled by their own short-term interests. In particular, attempts to court favourable coverage in the run-up to the general election already appear to be threatening the prospects of a decent policy emerging. That’s an indictment of our political system. And it would be a cruel irony if it means that this important issue itself remains under-reported.

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Small Heath Leisure Centre

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: November 3, 2009

Yesterday I managed to make it over to Small Heath Leisure Centre. It was built in 1975 and doesn’t look like it has had much done to it since then. The pool itself is in a reasonable condition (with its fairly odd L-shaped design), but the changing rooms were a bit of mess. There’s tiling missing from at least one wall, the showers are very old (and don’t function particularly well) and the toilets were without toilet paper. Most of the lockers were out of order – so it was kind of difficult to find one that worked. There was a big sign warning swimmers not to leave their locker key by the side of the pool. Great advice, except that the few keys that were available didn’t seem to come with a way of fastening them to your person. I spoke to a regular swimmer there who also wasn’t particularly impressed by the facilities and told me that people are even less happy with the gym that’s part of the centre. It’s a shame that the facilities aren’t better maintained, because t’s a 25m pool, which is far more useful for training than many of the atypical sized pools around the south of the borough. I know this might seem like a weird moan, but for people who use a pool for training it’s fairly important. I’d say that there’s plenty wrong with Small Heath Leisure Centre as a pool that wouldn’t cost that much to sort out.

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Ten things Birmingham can do to welcome the pirates

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: November 2, 2009

In a speech made today to an audience of Birmingham’s top business folk at the Big Debate, future seer and Financial Times super guru, Charles Leadbeater, encouraged Birmingham to become a home for pirates.

Sadly, Leadbeater wasn’t suggesting repatriating the Somali sailors who’ve been wreaking havoc in the Gulf of Aden for the last couple of years to Moseley, although I imagine the world’s major shipping firms might have been right behind him if he had. No, the pirates he wants to see in Birmingham are creative people who are prepared to challenge the status quo – and I assume some aspects of established law – to forge new industries.

The gist of his argument is that, if Birmingham wants to become the creative heart of the UK, it needs to find ways of attracting or fostering these people, getting them to work together and giving them the tools and space they need to be creative.

As someone who is a new arrival, here specifically to train and work in a creative industry, I feel pretty well placed, therefore, to make some practical suggestions of my own as to how this could be done.

None of this rocket science. In fact it’s all very simple. And I make no apology for unoriginality, either.

1. Sort the libraries out. Birmingham has a fantastic central library. Many people congregate here every day to do work, but it’s not a welcoming place. There should be wireless here, free to use, and there should be places where people can talk. That kind of model could be rolled out across the city, providing friendlier spaces for creative people to work.

2. Get the universities to work more closely together. Birmingham has some of the finest educational establishments in the country. If you are studying at one university you should be able to use the resources of another easily. It shouldn’t be a bureaucratic nightmare and people should know about the facilities they can use on other campuses. In fact, it’d be better if everyone had access to these institutions, regardless of whether they are studying or not.

3. Identify dead office space and get it into use. Find ways to make sure if offices, shops and other spaces are not being used they can be offered, for little or no money, to fledgling businesses and social enterprises so they can get going.

4. Make Birmingham’s students more welcome. With a population estimated to be as high as 60,000, Birmingham has a massive resource at its disposal. Among this population will be many of Leadbeater’s pirates. Sadly many of them will leave Birmingham before they can make a difference to the city. They should be encouraged to set up shop here, to mix and to put down roots.

5. Spend money on making Birmingham different, not on making it the same. Planners often want their city to have the things that establish it as a ‘city’, whether that be a cathedral in medieval times or a vast shopping centre now. But why would the pirates flock to somewhere that looks like every other place, if these are the people that hate convention? Birmingham should look to spend cash on decentralised public projects that aren’t run of the mill. Not big ones that could be anywhere.

6. Make moving around cheap! Why is it so expensive to get on a bus? Why is it not easier and safer to cycle? I’m guessing not all pirates will have their own galleons that they can sail on the canals. Birmingham should be an accessible place that is easy to get around. If Leadbeater is right, then pirates need to find other pirates easily.

7. Make conferences like today’s more open to the people they might affect. Recently, the Hello Digital conference caused a storm when the British Sign Language interpreter was late. It meant that some attendants were unable to understand what was going on for a good portion of the event. We should always make it as easy as possible for everyone to contribute to these kinds of events, because they’re an integral part of an ongoing conversation about how we become more creative. Clearly, you want to involve as many people as possible in that debate.

8. Whoever you are, share data. As was mentioned at the conference, it is clear that there are people in Birmingham who can do clever things with information. The council, other public bodies and even companies should do what they can to open up information that can be used to make peoples’ lives better. I know Leadbeater talked about how the city might be able to steal a march on the rest of the country by doing this, but the real goal should be to improve lives. That way, we’ll all be motivated to be involved.

9. Celebrate and encourage the success stories that are already here. Again, it’s been said before by far more eloquent people, but Birmingham has a wealth of talented people working in different fields who are already changing the city. If other people know that’s happening they’ll be more likely to come here.

10. As Julia has pointed out, I managed to misnumber my points! Hence, there were only nine. But I think this – er – fits nicely with another point that I should have made. Birmingham, particularly the council, has to be prepared to get things wrong and, when it does, own up to them. If the website was too expensive and not very good, then move on. Work with the people who’ve criticised it to improve it and learn from the smart people at your disposal. This is the largest unitary authority in the country. So why not take advantage of all that talent?

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Moseley Road Baths

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: October 30, 2009

Last night I went to Moseley Road Baths for the first time. The swimming pool complex, opened on October 30, 1907, is the only Grade II-listed baths in England and an extraordinary example of Edwardian public architecture. I’ll be going back there again on Saturday, for the Memories and Memorabilia day, where I hope to interview some of the people involved in the fight to save the baths.

But the aim of this visit was to see what swimming in the pool is like. Currently, only the smaller of the two pools is open. It’s still a decent length, but the facilities are pretty basic. There’s a sign by the showers warning that they occasionally run cold and the noise from the extractor fans at the far end of the pool is pretty deafening. The lifeguard there told me they hope they’ll be serviced in December, which should help to alleviate that problem.

Video taken from Friends of Moseley Road Baths’ http://www.moseleyroadbaths.co.uk

Just as Julia Gilbert found on her visit to Cocks Moors leisure centre, the water was a bit too warm for me. I asked the lifeguard about this and she told me that they keep the temperature up between 86F and 88F, because there are many swimmers who are less able and need to keep warm.

Moseley Road is an amazing place to swim and I really enjoyed my visit, but it can’t escape anyone’s notice that the place is in a state of critical disrepair. That’s not really surprising given its age and the amount of use it has seen over the years. I can also see why people are so proud of it. To be able to swim in a place with so much history and grandeur is a blessing despite its evident problems.

If anyone wants to help me to review this pool or add to my thoughts please do.

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Wyndley Leisure Centre

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: October 30, 2009

I’ve not had a chance to swim at Wyndley Leisure Centre, but regular swimmer Dominic Riordan was kind enough to send me his thoughts on the bath. I’ve included them below:

“Wyndley’s pretty good: it’s recently been refurbished , although it doesn’t seem like much has been done. The lanes are quite tight, and it’s insanely deep at the diving board end, but there’s a kid’s training pool which is good.

“Overall the facilities are good, but i don’t really ask for much – just somewhere to change and store my stuff. Oh, and a quick shower afterwards.

“We use some kind of leisure card that gives us free entry – it’s a Birmingham Council and NHS initiative to encourage use of leisure facilities. Apparently it’s in use all over Birmingham, but noone else I’ve spoken to seems to know about it.”

Many thanks to Dominic for his help. I’ll try to get up to Sutton Coldfield as soon I can!

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Harborne pool

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: October 29, 2009

This morning I swam at Harborne Baths. It took a bit more than 40 minutes from my home close to Five Ways shopping centre, in Ladywood. The swim was a very pleasant experience, as my short video, below, records. It only took about 10 minutes to go back on the bus and I didn’t have a long wait.

I’m wrong in the video though. The pool was opened in 1923, not 1925.

I had tried to go to the pool the evening before, but was stymied by its rather quixotic opening hours. Sadly, and I’m not quite sure why, it seems the online times provided on the council’s website bear no relation to the real timetable.

When I phoned up to ask if they were open a very helpful guy told me that the council’s website was ‘rubbish’, which I think seemed in the circumstances to be a reasonable assessment!

Harborne is probably something of an anachronism, despite its charms, character and the excellence of the staff. That’s because it is 23m, rather than 25m long, which is the standard distance for a short-course competition pool. Also, because there are no changing rooms (you have to change on the pool side, where there are lockers and changing compartments), it might seem a bit cramped. As I say in the video, there’s a risk that you could trail mud all over the poolside. Not a pleasant prospect! I guess that the fact the showers are also on poolside might make some people feel uncomfortable.

Nonetheless, I really liked the place. It’s got character, which few modern pools seem to have.

Hopefully this afternoon I’m off to check out another pool, probably Mosley Road Baths this time.

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Newtown baths to reopen ‘early next year’

By Andrew Brightwell | Published: October 28, 2009

Newtown baths will reopen ‘early next year’ after the discovery of asbestos in its ceiling forced it to close in May.
Birmingham City Council announced that the £140,000 required to remove the dangerous substance and build new structural supports had now been secured.
Councillor Martin Mullaney, cabinet member for leisure, sport and culture, welcomed the news and said that the leisure centre would also receive a new pool as part of council plans to invest in swimming facilities.
He said: “We have an ambitious long-term goal for new community pools across the city, but we know the importance of keeping existing facilities open in the meantime.
“I’ve worked closely with my cabinet colleague, Cllr Ayoub Khan, to secure funding for the repair work and further down the line we can look at plans for a new pool.”

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