My new article for The Argentina Independent

Training under the Tracks: Underground Boxing in Constitución Station

Giving credit for explaining credit

I went to Cheltenham Literary Festival on Saturday to see Hugh Pym, Gillian Tett and Paul Mason give a talk about business journalism during the recession. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Paul Mason in particular as I think he’s really good at translating dense economics into manageable and interesting news stories, but all three were really impressive and very erudite speakers.

The thing that really jumped out at me was the difficulty they had, and still have, in getting people to listen to economics and financial stories pre-2007. More specifically, how hard it was to put certian topics on the agenda.

Paul referred to information ‘hidden in plain sight’ which seemed to be a theme in business reporting and Gillian talked about her tactics of looking for the most boring, least comprehensible nuggets of financial jargon in order to find the crux of a story. If the Thick of it has taught me anything, it’s that the most interesting policies come dressed in the most boring titles and this is clearly no different.

In learning about how to craft news stories we are always told that the best ones have events and human faces to pin them to. Gillian said this was the hardest aspect of writing about structured investment vehicles (sexy) and the pretty opaque fluctuations of the debt and credit markets in 2004-7.

Now we have bankers as the human face of the crisis but before the bubble burst, there was barely any coverage of certain aspects of the financial system. Gillian Tett in particular seemed really concerned that stories of real importance were getting through to the public which is tough, when it takes more than 140 characters to explain credit swaps and defaults...

Same same but different: New media, old journalism

I’ve been reading a lot recently about the effects of digital media on news reporting. There seems to be a widely held view that social media and online news are threatening the role of the journalist as a purveyor of news. Personally, I disagree with this (which is fortunate, as my MA is costing quite a bit more than my twitter account). It seems to me that good journalism will always be important, if only to guide readers through the iguana-playing-the-piano videos to (more) important news.

However it is obvious that bad journalism has fewer and fewer places to hide in a digital realm. I was watching this video from the BBC Academy about the importance of accuracy in online reporting when I found this new report  by Open Democracy. In the blue corner we have the BBC, promoting truth and objectivity and in the red corner we have a respected online group accusing them of bias and shoddy reporting. Meanwhile the spectre of ‘Jim’ll fuck it’ lurks in the background...

So how do we make sure journalism remains relevant, respected and responsible when the public can fight back so publicly? Ironically, I think skills we need as new media journalists are the oldest ones in the book. Yes, we must learn the rules of the new digital landscape and embrace everything it offers us, but rigorous research and responsible reporting should still be the key – something I think this article tweeted this week by 10,000 words explains well.

The new report by Open Democracy into bias at the BBC

At the end of the day, journalism is a human discipline, based on human interactions and reactions. The mode of communication may have changed but the principle has not. For example two of the top social media tips for journalists in this article on the journalism.co.uk blog are ‘pick up the phone’ and ‘nurture your contacts’: Not exactly skills you you need an ipad for. It’s easy to get wrapped up in eulogistic attitudes towards digital media but in my view, the journalist makes the twitter account, not vice versa.