Potholes and dog poo: is this the future of journalism?

Photo courtesy of Matt Callow

"I don't care about local news."

The bold statement 'The Chancer', one of the journalist graduates from The Wannabe Hacks blog, made in a post about local journalism failing to engage young people attracted a string of of angry comments from several journalists, who called his argument "parochial", "naive", "ridiculous and lazy".

Knowing the power of the Internet in helping employers hire and fire, I was astounded that a young graduate, who "wanna be a hack", should have exposed such eyebrow-raising views in a public forum. His views, however, are far from being unique.

I live in a small, low-average-income town, where, I am certain, young people also think the local paper is only good for wrapping fish and chips. Apart from a few pubs and gambling places, our high street does not offer particularly attractive young leisure options. Not surprisingly, vandalism is a common local occurrence.

A large Christmas tree put up in the high street at the end of last year was tied to a security camera pole to prevent theft. Despite the effort, within 24 hours, its decorations had been stolen and destroyed. No one was even shocked but it filled me with rage and contempt. What had happened to community spirit? Where was the feeling of belonging and wanting to make things better?

Not all young people are apathetic of course. And not reading the local paper doesn't make you into a vandal either. The Chancer, as far as I know, is a law-abiding citizen, but his lack of interest in the local goings-on reflect that of a vast number of young people across the country. They do not feel a tie to their local area. They do not yet have social responsibilities that can be affected by local politics, local tax, local rubbish collection.

We can berate the wannabe hack for his flawed argument but not for his brutal honesty.

Local news readers
The editor-in-chief of my local newspaper recently extolled the importance of the paper in a double-page spread commemorating Local Newspaper Week (9 - 15 May).

He said the local voices that get heard through the paper represent "the bedrock of any democracy". The Prime Minister's also sent in a message reminding readers local papers help "hold the powerful to account", and former Guardian editor Peter Preston, concludes his column with: "Prize it, relish it, support it, because [..] it helps your world go round."

Democracy? Accountability? World spinner? When I stare at one of our local papers' front page story, and see a Yorkshire Terrier being hailed 'a hero'...for having barked – thus alerting his sleeping owner to a fire, the temptation is great to sneer at these idealistic concepts. 

Right, let's face it. The general pattern tends to be: a couple of larger stories from neighbouring towns, a smattering of nibs about local events and meetings; rehashed press release material, an OAP's 90th birthday, someone running for charity. All in all, fairly sleepy, polite news. An occasional death or crime thrown in for good measure.

Yet, if you look at the Letters page, you will see many locals and local politicians, have read it and written in with their say about an environmental issue, rubbish and bins, about cycle paths, or the lack of them, about dangerous potholes and annoying dog poo fouling the streets.

Whether the young are listening or not, this is their town, their community, their home – they do care. And as long as someone cares, journalists have a duty to fulfil.

Yes, there is room for improvement. Some decent subbing would not go amiss for starters – spelling and grammar in our local paper are often embarrassingly atrocious – and reporters could do with replacing lame press release rewriting with more footwork. But at the end of the day, no matter how good the writing is, papers still need advertising income, still need to sell copies. The question is how.

Dog shit and the future of news
I had hoped some kind of magic formula combining digital + (hyper)local + monetisation could be the answer. But when even the excellent Guardian Local initiative announced its closure for being 'unsustainable', my heart sank. What next then?

Talking at the Brighton Future of News earlier this week, Guardian data journalist James Ball pointed out that a street-by-street mapping of local crime is something no newspaper seems to be recording, but, if one was available, it could generate massive reader interest.

A light bulb went on over my head.

Could using data creatively be one of the solutions? Data visualisation is innovative, exciting and appealing to the eye. It is a fun way to tell a story with pretty pictures – much like a graphic novel – although it is still up to the journalist to find the story in the data.

Most importantly, it could engage younger readers, like The Chancer, who might just take a bit more interest in the local news. Of course this would still imply a migration from print to digital, but more eyeballs on local news can't be a bad thing.

At the BBC Social Media Summit (hashtag #bbcsms on Twitter) this week, Will Perrin founder of Talk About Local mentioned a North London local site, which, despite being run at only £8/month, attracts the equivalent proportionate audience as BBC's Newsnight – even though, in his words, it is fundamentally about "crime, potholes and dog shit". [Watch the video on the BBC College of Journalism site (26min in)]

Will Perrin's words convince me even more that journalists discussing the future of local news should be more concerned about format, presentation and delivery, a little less about local content, which although spurned by the young and the apathetic, still seems pertinent.

In my amused perverted mind, I am imagining a Google Map of dog fouling with pet owners' names against turd-shaped placemarks to name and shame offenders. It wouldn't work in real life, but it would certainly grab readers' attention and provoke mirth.

BBC's Dave Lee's tweet below says it all. We could spend a lifetime debating the future of news and local journalism, but the answer, I suspect, is already right here, at our feet. Quite literally.

The man who was arrested for greeting strangers

The story of the Japanese blog that made the nation laugh so hard it caused a major stir in the Japanese blogosphere, and allegedly shot up to first place in their FC2 blog ranking last week, is too good not to be shared.

Since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake in the northeast of Japan last month, much has been written in the Western media about the dignified and selfless manner the Japanese conduct themselves in a crisis. In fact, such was the national degree of solidarity that a large number of companies decided to stop airing commercial advertisements for the time being. 

From mid-March, these have been largely replaced by ads produced by the Advertising Council Japan (AC Japan), a membership organisation which runs campaigns and adverts concerning public welfare: anything from health and recycling to etiquette, much like the Public Service Announcements in the US. Their ads, however, are being shown with such high frequency on Japanese television, they began to attract complaints from exasperated Japanese and foreigners residing in Japan, saying they "get on their nerves".

Amused by one particular AC Japan ad, one Japanese blogger decided to investigate whether the message it was advocating was actually valid. The 60-second educational advert features cartoon characters singing hello ("kon'nichiwa"), good night ("oyasuminasai"), thank you ("arigato"), and other key Japanese greetings to each other. It closes with the slogan: 

"Every time you greet someone, you make a new friend." 

His objective was to test their claims that one can befriend people by saying hello. But what started as a well-intentioned joke ended up landing him in deep waters. 

One evening, accompanied by a friend, the man started enthusiastically shouting "kon'nichiwa" to random men and women who walked past them outside a train station, while he documented their reaction in his blog post, "Is this ad true?"  The experiment went on for nearly an hour. 

A taxi driver, a post office worker, an old lady and a lady with a small child were some of a handful that did react, but the overwhelming majority not only blanked him but also scurried away as quickly as possible. When he finally heard someone take the initiative to greet him first, he was filled with glee. 

It was the police. 

The conversation that ensued is worth a translation:
Policeman: "Kon'nichi wa. What are you doing?"
Man: "I am greeting people."
Policeman: "And why?"
Man: "Do I need a reason to greet people?"
Policeman: "Are you campaigning for an election?"
Man: "Nope, I just wanted to make friends."

The man was then taken to a police station – where he carried on greeting all and sundry – and was questioned by several officers, who, incidentally, all said hello. Following a telling-off for giving tongue-in-cheek replies to the police, the blogger was forced to explain the reason for his uncommon behaviour, before being released. 

Officer 1: "I would not say it is a bad thing but it rises suspicions, so stop it now and just lead a normal life." 
Officer 2: "It is very brave of you; I'd like to tell you to continue but, sadly, it is too much to expect in present-day Japan."

The man concludes the report on his experiment with the result: 

"Every time you greet people, people call the police."

At the time of writing, his blog, called "I am stupid. I howl at the moon. " (Baka damon. Tsukini hoeru), had received nearly 7,000 "Like" (or what the Japanese call "Applause") clicks, 4,000 Facebook "Likes" and had been retweeted an astounding 48,400 times.

Although the preposterousness of the situation makes you chuckle, once the amusement subsides, you can't help but feel a tinge of sadness. It resonates with prevailing attitudes in modern city life, which not even a catastrophic earthquake may be able to shake off. 

No wonder he is howling at the moon.

The Japan quake wall of shameful journalism: are you on it?

Last week I wrote a piece for The Media Blog about Fox News' hilarious blunder in having included a trendy night club in central Tokyo on a map of nuclear reactors in Japan. 

But examples of poor journalistic practice may not always amuse, especially when they can dramatically influence the public's sense of vulnerability or distort perception of a delicate reality, as in the case of Japan's recent earthquake. 

Andrew Woolner, a former IT worker resident in Yokohama, was so appalled by the poor reporting on the earthquake and its aftermath causing unnecessary panic among foreigners in Japan, he felt compelled to create a black list called "The Journalist Wall of Shame", as he explains in his blog. 

The wiki invites contributors to name and shame the worst offenders among the world's media organisations for their sensationalist or misleading coverage.

Earlier this week its bad journalism list had received at least 180 (unedited) entries from the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Italy. A separate section Woolner subsequently added for good journalism had 34 entries at the time of writing.

Woolner's original idea was to gather only a few examples of particularly bad journalism with his friends on Twitter and make individual complaints. He told me by email:

"I never thought it would get so big"

Below are three examples of poor/sensationalist journalism from the UK that have been entered on the shaming list:

1. The Sun: Starving Brit Keely: My nightmare trapped in City of Ghosts – Tokyo -the headline says it all. Starvation? Zombies? Ghost Town? Pleeeeze.
2. The Star: Rosie DiManno's No Escape Valve for So Much Grief - nauseatingly and gratuitously melodramatic, and condescending towards the Japanese. 
3. The Mail Online: UN predicts nuclear plume could hit US by Friday... Starts with mentions of "terrified passengers packing Tokyo airport" and predictions that the toxic plume would "head into Southern California [...], Nevada, Utah and Arizona" only to later contradict itself by stating that the US Nuclear Regulator Commission had said "it expected no harmful levels of radiation would reach the U.S. from Japan".

Even the data visualisation in Randall Munroe's Radiation Dose Chart, although well-intentioned, doesn't help contain the panic many are experiencing from possible exposure to harmful levels of radiation. Compare it to this chart by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, or Tokyo Electric Power Company's, which provide a similar visualisation – in context.

For us, living outside Japan and looking in through the tinted glasses of western media, it is difficult to gauge the real mood of those who are inside. 

Judging from the exasperated anti-media messages I have been seeing on Facebook from expats living in Japan, I fear the reality may differ significantly from what has been reported in the press. One of my personal friends, an American currently working in Tokyo, wrote on his Facebook 'wall': 

"No disrespect to the people that have left - but this is turning into a farce. I hope somebody holds the media responsible when it finally fizzles out."

Woolner deserves accolade for doing exactly that – holding journalists to account – but he is realistic about what his "Wall of Shame" can achieve.

"I don't think the work we've done will necessarily make a big difference, but If we can at least get people to start being aware of the problem, maybe there's hope."

Being ethnically Japanese and having lived in Japan for many years, I admit to having, at times, allowed strong emotions to cloud over my objectivity while watching events unfold in the country the past few weeks. But the journalist in me agrees that, as in any other profession, we should never forget the lasting impact the quality of our work will have on any community, large or small.

As Woolner said:

"Bad journalists [...] are like bad doctors [...], bad soldiers, and bad firemen [...]; they make the world a worse place to live in."

***************

If you would like to help the victims of the earthquake in Japan, please click on this this link, where you will find a list of organisations (scroll to the end of that page) you can donate to in your geographical area. Andrew Woolner, as promised!

FOI: why who is requesting (shouldn't but) can matter

(This post was also published in the Help Me Investigate blog.)

Freedom of Information requests should be "applicant blind" and "motive blind" but they are often not treated as such – David Higgerson, head of multimedia for Trinity Mirror Regional, points out in his blog post FOI FAQ.

This means that FOI rules are being breached if a press officer, to whom your request has been passed on by the FOI officer, asks you what you need the information for. 

It is important for journalists to be aware of this to ensure their FOI requests are not treated differently just because they are coming from a member of the Press. Read David Higgerson's other post on how NHS officers are being instructed to keep an eye on 'round-robin requests' as evidence that in the world of FOIs, not all requests are equal.

A former public sector's FOI practitioner, who blogs under the name FOI Man, has posted his insider's view on when he deems it fair to reveal the identity of the requester and when not. 

Double-edged sword
Until I read FOI Man's blog, I hadn't been fully aware of the implications of an FOI officer sharing details of journalists' requests with the organisation's press officer, whose job, after all, is to manage its relations with the Press. The press officer cannot, of course, ask the FOI officer to modify the FOI response but it is still rather a worrying thought that spin doctors should be able to freely see who is asking for what information and comment on a draft reply. 

FOI Man says he often removes the name and contact details of the requester before circulating them in-house. But authorities are entitled to know who made the request and may need to know their ID to ascertain that it is not 'vexatious'. 

In practice, in the spirit of the FOIA, transparency works both ways: just as you count on full disclosure of the information requested, there is nothing an FOI officer can ultimately do to justify withholding information on the person requesting the information.

Vexatious or not vexatious?
Higgerson explains in his post that the circumstances under which a request can be considered as such are restricted. More details and examples can be found in this guidance note issued by the Information Commissioner's Office "Vexatious or repeated requests". 

Below is a summary of the four possible 'vexatious' scenarios. 

1. The requester is obsessive: if the requesters' records show FOI requests on the same topic are being used repeatedly to reopen issues that have already been considered.

2. The request is a harassment: if the authority believes the request itself could constitute harassment 'of a reasonable person'. Requests biased by complaints/accusations, use of hostile or offensive language, or an unreasonable fixation on a particular individual could all be used as grounds to classify the request as harassment.

3. The request is seen as aiming to cause disruption: the authority must prove the requester has got malicious intent, but the argument would hold only in the unlikely event the requester has openly stated they are out to cause maximum inconvenience.

4. The request lacks real purpose or value: an auhority can claim this but only as an additional argument to support points one to three above. Thankfully, for the requester, the ICO rules that "it is not appropriate to use lack of value as an argument simply because you cannot imagine what the value might be" and that the fact that the FOI request has a serious purpose can stop it being vexatious.

ID Protection
Section 8 of the Freedom of Information Act states that for a request to be valid the request must “state the name of the applicant and an address for correspondence”.

The dilemma arises, however, when someone is requesting information about their employer. In such instance identification of the requester may not be in their best interest. 

FOI Man says there is then no other recourse than to go undercover and use a (credible) pseudonym, though it is not a method he condones.

'At your own risk', is probably the best answer. The ICO clearly states "pseudonymous requests are outside the scope of [the Information Commissioner]'s jurisdiction"

Is it a case of right to know versus the right not to be known.

From blogger to Guardian reporter: deconstructing Josh Halliday's x-factor





Josh Halliday at Brighton Future of News Group
(photo by Sarah Booker)



The Brighton Future of News Group (BFONG)'s 10th meetup registered record attendance last Monday when around 35 members gathered in the function room at The Eagle in Brighton. There was a buzz of anticipation in the air.

They had come to listen to much hyped young journalist Josh Halliday talk about his success story from graduation from the University of Sunderland straight into a junior reporter job at The Guardian, no less.

At the News Rewired event last June, the 22-year-old media and technology reporter was one of four journalists mentioned by MSN UK's executive producer's Peter Bale in his keynote speech for their success in building their own 'brand' online. The other three mentions were Jemima Kiss from The Guardian, Robert Andrews, editor of paidContent UK and Will Perrin of Talk About Local, all of whom older and more experienced than Josh.

Find your inner brand

Notice the use of the word 'brand'.

To be able to stand out in a crowd and increase your chances for work, a degree, a polished CV and a few months of work experience thrown in for good measure no longer suffice. Being aware of one's strenghts and portraying them to the world in a distinctive way – in other words, establishing, and marketing, your identity as a journalist – is the best cover letter you could ever present a prospective employer. Are you  leaving a mark wherever you tread? Are you getting the right type of attention by the right group of people?  

Because there are far more graduates each year than there are jobs, "you need to do something to get ahead", Josh advises.  And at an age when digital permeates every section of the media world, having a blog, a website or, at the very least, a social media presence seems like an obvious card to have up one's sleeve, the 'edge' over the competition. 

Josh thinks even Dan Sabbagh was discovered and landed his job as Guardian's Head of Media and Technology, less because of his credentials at The Times than his 'extra-curricular' activities online – his news site Beehive City. 

It is worth remembering Joanna Geary, community editor of The Times, famously received a job offer on Twitter. Josh promoted his SR2 hyperlocal blog, which got him noticed by other journalists and eventually his future employers, also entirely on Twitter. He joined the microblogging site in December 2008; the following year he was already employed by The Guardian.

Former head of digital development at Telegraph Media Group, Greg Hadfield, a frequent attendee of the BFONG meetings, calls the phenomenon "the new fast track for journalists to success".

Rules of engagement

But Twitter does not always work as a 140-character notice board for jobseekers, nor does it replace traditional job search routes. Twitter, social media sites and blogs are mere tools. As with any tool, the outcomes will depend on whether you know how to use them.

The success of Josh Halliday's SR2 blog and the effectiveness of his brand can be attributed to a simple skill anyone can learn: knowing how to engage with people. 

His tips for the Brighton Journalist Works' students, who will be covering their own patches as community reporters, were crucially centred round communication with people: making friends with the local policeman, searching for tweeterers in the local area, replying to their questions about the nearest dry cleaner's. Building personal relationships, a skill universities do not necessarily teach, could determine whether you get to that breaking piece of news first, or not.

Dialogue
Several local journalists, including former Argus reporter Richard Gurner, talked proudly about the privilege of being able to "enter people's lives" as a journalist. "It is a key reason to be a journalist," he said. As a local reporter working under pressure, going out to meet people everyday was not always possible. 

Joel Gunter, sub-editor at Journalism.co.uk, pointed out that, if you work for a smaller site, engaging with people through (moderated) comments left on news articles online, can compensate for the lack of direct contact with one's audience. 

Old-school print journalists may be struggling with the very concept of having one's piece commented on by readers, let alone engaging in dialogue with them, but I doubt dinosaurs will survive the digital revolution in media.

Journalism in the 21st century thrives on two-way communication. News, particularly online, is no longer static and final; instead it can evolve with the audience.

 

Special

Watching the feel-good effect Josh Halliday seemed to have on the BFONG crowd I asked myself what this young hack's pulling power really was about, apart from being so young yet so enviously successful?

Skimming the attendees' comments on the meetup page, I notice the word "unassuming" appears more than once. I must admit that is also the quality I most admire in Josh: his modesty, his feet-on-the-ground attitude, the refreshing balance of a mature head on a young body. Despite all the public accolades received, he retains perspective and a genuine sense of wonder about the world in general.

My highlight of the evening was when Greg Hadfield asked him: "Where do you see yourself in five years' time?" The audience laughed, then held its breath in expectation. Unlike most journalists, who start their careers covering council meetings at a small regional newspaper and work their way up the Fleet Street ladder, where can one aim to go after a job at The Guardian at the age of 22?  

Josh's reply was unexpected and made me gasp for its disarming candidness: he would love to do what he enjoys the most, i.e. being a local reporter...

Perhaps the shortcut to success then is staying true to one's heart, no matter where one is in the journey. For that alone, Josh Halliday has a captive audience in me.

Join BFONG

BFONG organiser Sarah Booker's live blogged the event here, and I tweeted under the usual hashtag #bfong. For news and reminders about future meetups follow @brighton_fong on Twitter or join the Brighton Future of News group. The group is open to all and attendance is free.

Why the Freedom of Information Act makes GPs vulnerable under the new NHS

[This post first appeared in The Help Me Investigate blog]

The National Health Service is about to undergo a major overhaul, with strategic health authorities and primary care trusts being abolished and GPs gaining control of the NHS budget and responsibility to commission healthcare services. 

Some GPs are not happy about the pressure imposed by their additional administrative duties, which could detract from their primary role as doctors. Others may see the change as empowering, but more power probably also means increased public scrutiny – for doctors are not immune to the spying eye of Freedom of Information Act.

The resolution of case reference FS50295954 of the Information Commissioner's Office involving a general practice in County Durham illustrates the point. 

The case was referred to the Information Commissioner, when the complainant failed to obtain full disclosure of the information he had requested to the practice. The ICO ruled in favour of the complainant. 

What happened? 

1. The complainant wrote an FOI letter to Weardale Practice requesting information on eight points mainly relating to the Practice's Health and Safety regulations. 

2. Some of the information was released after the Information Commissioner intervened but some remained undisclosed.

3. The Practice tried to justify withholding information by using section 40 (2) of the Freedom of the Information Act, which refers to exemption on the grounds of personal data protection.

4. The Commissioner did not think disclosure of the information requested would cause damage or distress to the individuals whose data would be made public through it.

5. The ICO considered that Weardale Practice was in breach of the Freedom of Information Act.

You can read the Decision Notice in its entirety here. 

The law is clear on doctors' accountabilities. Schedule 1 of the Freedom of Information Act covers which public authorities the Act covers. Part III of Schedule 1 relates to organisations and individuals in the National Health Service, with paragraphs 44 and 45 referring specifically to GPs and other medics:

"44. Any person providing general medical services, general dental services, general ophtalmic services or pharmaceutical services under Part II of the National Health Service Act 1977, in respect of information relating to the provision of those services

45. Any person providing personal medical services or personal dental services under arrangements made under section 28C of the National Health Service Act 1977, in respect of information relating ot the provision of those services." 

Under the Freedom of Information Act, not only a practice but individual doctors working at the practice are considered to be public authorities and can therefore be held accountable. 

Nothing new there. The novelty could be in the fact that we may be evaluating our GPs less as healers of our ailments, more as politicians in charge of public affairs that impact our welfare. 

As long as the Freedom of Information Act rules, it is the patients who will have their fingers on the doctor's pulse.

News:Rewired -- valuable digital lessons for the book trade

Since its launch in January this year, I have been a 'serial' delegate at the News Rewired events (hashtag #newsrw  on Twitter) aimed at online journalists and anyone working in the digital field. Last December I went to event no.3, which was about building a brand and digital products to support and share content.

A link-by-link coverage can be found here, including reactions from delegates, and video footage of all sessions taken by the BBC College of Journalism are now available on YouTube.

To avoid repeating what dozens of other delegates have already blogged about in the journalism context, I will focus this post on what I learned at News:Rewired form the point of view of a publishing professional.

Doherty and C Words
Anthony Thornton , group digital editor at IPC Meda, talked about building a community, although 'building' sounds like a misnomer, since he says communities do not need to be built – they are out there already on the Internet, or they are people who just need to be connected and gathered into a community.

And how?

According to Thornton, there are four Cs to be followed:

• Connection - go out and link out to people
• Conversation - engage in a conversation, don't just host a forum
• Consultation - ask what people are thinking about something
• Collaboration - get people to help you with what you have built

He illustrated with his own success story of how his 2006 book on Pete Doherty's band, The Libertines Bound Together (Little Brown), ended up in eigth place in the coveted Sunday Times' Top 10 bestsellers' list, despite his publisher's naught marketing spend.

Thornton set up a page to promote the book on MySpace [today it would probably have been on Facebook] (Connection), ran tailored competitions for the band's fans, formed and interacted with a community of 1700 followers (Conversation).

He then persuaded his editor to allow readers to decide the book's cover design (Consultation); even the book's appendix was fact-checked by a number of key fans and 'influencers', who having been involved themselves, recommended it to others (Collaboration).

Going native
Thornton's success could have been partly down to the fact that The Libertines' fans already had a strong active online presence; even so I was delighted to hear how a little creativity on a non-existent budget went such a a long way in boosting the sales of a book.

As a digital enthusiast, I am surprised we do not hear more stories like this on a daily basis. After all...

(Image borrowed from James Lowery's presentation at News:Rewired on search optimisation for B2B and specialist media.)

Whether they have even heard of e-books or not, there is no denying consumers are spending more and more time online and not only through computers. In the age of Internet and information overload, attention spans are known to be shorter, reading habits hugely fragmented. But even those who don't have time to read books or newspapers, do find time to surf the Net on the go on their smartphones and iPads.

In order to get the attention of those time-poor but digitally savvy readers, and retain their custom, publishers should be learning to speak a language they can relate to, foreign as it may seem.

Forget discussions on iPad apps versus e-readers, debates about Google, Amazon and the agency model. They make great topics for forums and conferences for publishing types, but the average reader is hardly likely to be interested in what pricing issues are making book people hot under the collar. What readers seek, what all consumers seek, is added value for money – not only BOGOFs.

Social media sells brands
A valuable message I keep hearing at News:Rewired was that whatever the product, online exposure do help sell, and with minimum to naught PR cost involved.

A recent article in The Economist about public relations explained that, as mainstream media start to play less of a central role as the traditional gatekeepers of news, the value of their advertising slots also decrease for the PR man.

It is interesting that Nike, which, like Apple, is known as a brand so strong that it came to represent a certain type of lifestyle, uses both paid ads in mainstream media as well as Facebook, where, when I last looked, 3.5 million people had "liked" its page.

Anne Gregory, professor of public relations at Leeds Metropolitan University, however, explains that few PR firms run social-media-only campaigns. She told the Economist:

"All that is happening is that social-media elements are being added to traditional marketing plans."

So, a bit of the old, a bit of the new.

Nothing prevents publishers from taking a leaf out of Nike's book and maximising returns through free PR on social media outlets, building and managing an online community of 'likers' and 'followers'. There is of course the good old blogosphere, micro-blogging sites such as Twitter, plus a myriad of other social networking sites, but every publisher also has a website that serves as a portal to its products.

The questions that remain are: is that portal open wide enough and how many visitors are actually coming back?

Retention vs. acquisition

There are far worse things than paywalls to stop people from wanting to access what you have to show them, and that is a site which is closed to the outside world, a site that does not engage, invite participation or acknowledge users as a member of the community.

Joanna Geary, keynote speaker at News:Rewired, was inspirational in confirming the old sales motto that "the customer is king". Geary is communities editor at The Times, which is currently under a paid-for subscription model. From her days as a business journalist at The Birmingham Post, she was uncomfortable with the fact that an article's only measure of success was whether your editor was pleased with it. There was something missing: the reader.

Her new business strategy at The Times was based on engaging and building 'relationships' with the reader, something journalists are not accustomed to. Amassing numbers of what she calls 'eyeballs', or unique visitors to the site, for the sake of the advertisers, is less important than identifying and retaining those repeat customers/readers with a tribal sense of loyalty, she says.

The Times Online may have gone behind a paywall but Geary says there is now stronger loyalty among their regular readers, who keep traffic to the site stable. They feel they own and belong to the site they have to paid to get into, so they keep coming back. The site has become a place where community members meet to have grown-up conversations with each other. That makes sense.

You can see the video footage of Jo Geary' talk below, courtesy of the BBC College of Journalism.

Enhanced interacti..on
If building and servicing your community can keep readers loyal to a newspaper, why should it not be equally effective in the publishing industry? Imagine a book club type of space, where fans of an author could feed back impressions, write their own reviews, exchange recommendations on what to read next.

What if every book you bought came with a unique code that allowed you entry into such literary chat rooms? Similar fan sites may already exist for certain authors or product lines, but what about transforming entire pages within publishers' websites into community pages, where a staff member(s) in a sales/marketing+creative/editorial combination role could regularly talk with, not 'at', its public? Would it not make commissioning jobs easier, sell more books, create more buzz, keep readers feeling they are part of the tribe, and ultimately, loyal to the publisher's brand?

The really good news for cash-strapped publishing houses is that none of these possibilities require more than a good web developer and a personable community manager.

Conclusions

• Passive content creation and static, one-way PR are a thing of the past. Publishers of content, be it facts or fiction, ought to take heed and start re-evaluating their roles. Why shouldn't curated information be part of the creative process? 
• While UK publishers are obsessing about the future of digital books en masse, not enough are actively seeking to understand the 'lingo' the future consumers of digital products speak. What better way of doing that than reaching out for your own niche community in the online world?
• It is not what you sell but 'how' you sell it that will give you an edge in the future.

The News Rewired event may have been about digital tools and processes, but, as Neil Perkin, founder of digital and media consultancy Only Dead Fish, wisely said, we should not forget that ultimately...

 "It's not about the technology; it's about the people." 

A good place to start.