So we have Kick.ie which is meant to be a DIGG-like site for Ireland though it isn’t hugely popular right now but a comment from Blog from the Bog notes:
The only news that gets reported are the stories that come to the papers, there are no journalists anymore that go out looking for news. The importance of blogging during the recent election was mooted by Damien Mulley and that idea could be developed further into all news reporting. Why shouldn’t bloggers get the scoops?
There is plenty of news out there to go around I should think, though it would take some looking and digging unless you happened upon it by chance. Not every story would be headlined on the evening news but I suspect there are more enthusiastic bloggers out there than reporters.
Firstly, I do think there are journalists who search for stories but I also think the modern cut and thrust of the news industry means most cannot afford to spend too much time on a story and deeply researching it. They are afterall paid to report on a daily or weekly basis and to fill x amount of space while trying to produce something which is also timely and not old news.
Enough of that for now, so why don’t bloggers get scoops? I think it has to do with the type of scoops. Some are deliberately leaked or fed in return for an ego boost, knowing you are the cause of headlines, even if you are a “source within company x”. If I did an FOI and got some great information and I blogged it, it might get a bit of attention but only when someone reads my blog in the mainstream press would the readership of the story go from 1200 to 12,000 o even 120,000. You got to wonder if a blog had 120k daily readers, would they be doing the scooping by being fed so much? I think they would. This is how it works in the States. Blogorrah gets a lot of scoops these days or takes a scoop from a lesser site and gets it huge attention. They currently only work in a certain niche but the model can work for other sites too.
Then there are they accidental finds and again getting the word out. Many people that make an accidental find will blog about it if they have a blog and if not they’ll tell someone who’ll tell someone and it ends up getting to the ears of a journalist or is more likely these days, it goes on a blog or discussion forum first. Anything on youTube is on a blog first, including all those Garda videos of late.
Then there are the investigative scoops, after a tipoff or suspicion. Research into company records, or local newspaper stories or FOI requests. Those who are employed to write might have time to do this but bloggers themselves might not have time. The recent article(s) in the Irish Times and their consumer panel were actually noted on my blog last year but it was only through a conversation with John Collins that he learned that ComReg pay people on their consumer panel to sit through presentations from telcos on how everything is great in Ireland. Yadda. Yadda.
For the FOI requests, wouldn’t it be good if there was a site that scanned in all FOI requests and made them public. Make FOI requests and either upload them yourelf to the service or post them to the service and they’ll scan them in. Tag them and stick them online to be found. Maybe use OCR software to recan them and convert the scans to text so the search engines can find them even more.
But getting to the point of this post. If someone has an interesting story, wouldn’t it be good if there was an “attention” button which people could press if they think that post should get looked at by the press? kind of like a DIGG button but specifically for newsworthy stories.
So you want to make it easier for journalists to nick stories from bloggers?!
If someone has an interesting story, wouldn’t it be good if there was an “attention� button which people could press if they think that post should get looked at by the press? kind of like a DIGG button but specifically for newsworthy stories.
Seriously don’t think that’d work though. It’ll end up being spammed, like Digg, full of crap from people who want profile and hits.
How do you control the quality? If the story is good enough it’ll get picked up, surely..
I was thinking that maybe only allow bloggers to bump up the story. True, that again will get people to do the whole popularity thing but it might control the spamming to a better degree than people getting all their mates to vote for them. There could also be a negative feedback in it. Allow uber-mods to look at it and mark it as shite which would put an x against the person. Though that’s all a bit elitist! Gosh.
You could also restrict it to one submission a week. Though, I’m probably skipping way ahead here already. Out of the 2000 or so blogs on IrishBlogs.ie, how many new and newsworthy stories would you find on it per week?
I dunno. There are lots of blogs out there that maybe have 8-9 daily reads and maybe 3-4 subscribers. If they wrote something interesting, how would they get attention apart from say another blogger pointing to them? And further attention when that blogger gets the press to pay attention?
Like was mentioned in the blog I pointed to, the niche story of EPA violations in Cavan might not ever get picked up but might actually be a good story, fit for a broadsheet.
Whatever controls you might place on it, if the purpose is to garner attention then it will be spammed – and successfully so.
Restricting to bloggers will just mean that spammers maintain blogs or whatever is necessary to qualify. If the attention is worth it then the spam will come, and every attempt to reduce the spam will proportionately reduce the very attention you want for the story.
“For the FOI requests, wouldn’t it be good if there was a site that scanned in all FOI requests and made them public.”
Heh. The Sunday Times irritated other papers a few years ago by regularly submitting FoI requests to a number of government departments asking for information on FoI requests submitted by journalists.
I dunno. There are lots of blogs out there that maybe have 8-9 daily reads and maybe 3-4 subscribers. If they wrote something interesting, how would they get attention apart from say another blogger pointing to them? And further attention when that blogger gets the press to pay attention?
Isn’t that what blogs do anyway though? Someone links, someone else reads then links etc etc. If it’s good enough it’s bound to make it to some ‘higher profile’ blogs. Or get nicked by Blogorrah 😀
I’d take a step back and say that I think there is a need to reconsider the concept of “the press”. Sure, the central core of the idea remains pretty much in place at the moment: a small number of organisations in each “domain” (local or national, principally) is used by large numbers of people as their key sources of information.
However, the combination of (i) the access of people outside these “media” organisations to information and (ii) the ability of all of these people to make that information available to lots of other interested people means that the old model is, at best, very frayed at the edges. I don’t know how much that fraying wil move towards unraveling of the fabric.
Having said that, I will admit that my comment is prompted more by remarks by Eoin O’Dell at a conference on “The Consitution at 70” at the weekend, where the reference in the Bunreacht to the special role of the press in a democratic society was mentioned. My concern there is at the idea that, say, Damien Mulley gets some constitutional protection when his writing appears on tribune.ie that he doesn’t get when his words appear on mulley.net, or that Damien Mulley doesn’t get that protection because (most of) his income comes from not reporting news for publication whereas Shane Hegarty does because his income does seem inadequate to an age where we are moving towards greater participatory access in the information sphere as well as the decision-making sphere. But if that doubtful distinction should apply to a constitutional protection (Tipster mulls a “‘Contsituional Protection for Mulley’ Campaign”), I think it prompts us to question the idea of a “press” against whom we should measure the iportance of a piece of information.
A further point is that, at the moment, access to information in many areas is still difficult — how easy is it to track the decisions of your county councillors and their votes? (And contrast that with the Dáil and Seanad.) We need more openness there too.
Is that not a little bit like kick.ie??
I think the FOI scans suggestion is a good idea.
I think the argument about there not being any journalists who look for news is not accurate. On alot of the dailies about 75% of their content is basically recycled press releases. But there are exceptions.
As someone writing for the business section of a Sunday newspaper, I spend alot of time searching for news. I’m currently working on a time consuming investigation but this has to be done in between doing other work and what have you. So you’re right that we are at the mercy of the cut and thrust of the industry.
Look at David Leigh and his colleague at The Guardian’s recent BAE story in the UK. That must have taken months of research and look at the impact it is having across other media and in the political sphere there.
I think the Sundays here are more in that league than the dailies.
It would be most unusual for a journalist to be given a few weeks, let alone a few months, to investigate a story. Bloggers are short of resources too. If a news organisation was to make such time available it would have a major impact.
That’s the problem Padraig – it is unusual. Some stories can be turned around in very little time.
But proper in-depth research and analysis takes time. Arguably news organisations have the resources but their journalists don’t have the time and the reverse might be true of some but not all bloggers – although many obviously have jobs and what have you.
While the article is hardly scoop-like investigative journalism, I see that a blog entry on IKEA has been republished on the op-ed page in today’s Irish Times.
Bloggers will hardly be able to compete with fast breaking news stories or expect to recieve insider tips unless they are a full time hard news blog. But wouldn’t it be grand if there was a way to “introduce” a potential newsworthy story into the Blogosphere that would get a viewing over and above it’s own readership? The political site that Damien runs does that for Irish Politics, how about one for news Damien? 🙂
You mean an aggregator for Irish News? Like PoliticsInIreland.com? How would that work? PII works by searching the net for politician’s names.
Well possibly you could add “Issues” as well as locations and names as a topic for listing political discussions thus picking up items that are political in nature but otherwise overlooked. Still pull the politicians names as you do from the net but add a new category? Then there are three ways of cross-referencing ie. Politician/Region/Issue, just a thought, I am delighted with your site and am a frequent visitor; but, would love to see other bloggers opinions and comparisons on current affairs and how the politicians stand on them. Can it be done? No idea myself, I am technologically challenged! 🙁