noodlepie

Blogging for the BBC

I recently started blogging for the good folks over at BBC Good Food Magazine. This is a regular gig. I'll be blogging there every Friday. I've been chatting and working with the digital and the print side of the magazine on and off for around a year now and the blog just recently 'soft' opened. Please go take a look and tell us what you think. Also, look out for the February print edition of the magazine for more detail on the blog. I'll be covering completely different food topics to those I blog about at The Observer and to a completely different audience.

I now blog professionally in three different places and it does somewhat curtail the time I can spend on this blog. However, I wouldn't be doing any of them if I wasn't totally into what they all do. Just a quick recap, here are all the blogs I currently work on, some are paid, most are not,

• Noodlepie - This one. The one you're looking at. The good stuff is in the right hand column.
• awholelotofcrunch - All the Twiglets, all the time. The world's favourite only Twiglets blog.
• From the Frontline - news from the world of foreign correspondents, war reporters and the media in general. I really enjoy all the blogs I work on, but I am pretty much addicted to doing this one.
• Filthy France - don't tend to tread much in here these days. But France is no cleaner than when I started this blog.
• Word of Mouth - The brilliant food blog from the brilliant Observer Food Monthly magazine.
• BBC Good Food - The shiny new BBC blog from the ace recipe magazine.
• idrawsnails - And chameleons, whales, ghosts, spiders and caterpillars. Every kid should have a pixellated scrapbook.
• Commentisfree - Really don't know if I'll write here again. I hope so.
• Twitter - useless and useful. I recommend.

On the frontline

 

Along with the blogging gig at The Observer. This week I also started work with The Frontline Club. The club is a registered charity and supports those working in journalism in the world's trouble spots and war zones. If you don't know what The Frontline Club does, click the video above to find out. I'm really excited about working with these folk. We're still ironing out the details, but I'll be working mainly on the digital/social media side of things.

Keeping with the online theme, I'm doing more and more 'social media' training. Mainly for journalists, editors and print media staff. Much of that is with BBC Worldwide magazines. It's very enjoyable, very productive stuff. I leave each session knowing the people have the skills, knowledge and access to information they didn't have before. I'm lifting curtains, blinds, shutters and plenty other things :)

For all that, actual journalism hasn't really taken a back seat as been almost dumped. I'll still be doing bits for The Press Gazette and its ilk. Hopefully, I'll be doing more for the UK and US food press too. However, for the moment, Frontline, media training and foodblogging are the main interests and I'm really pleased with this set up. If you can see any crossover with what you do, or you're interested in asking me to come in and train/talk to the folk within your organisation about blogs/social media/online journalism/foodblogging, drop me a line.

Vietnam to censor blogs

"The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Culture and Information are to target bloggers and blog-hosting websites in the latest move by the government to restrict what Vietnamese write about and post on the internet. The chief inspector of the Ministry of Culture and Information Vu Xuan Thanh said the two ministries would issue a joint circular to strictly control and monitor what is written in online blogs, especially views against the state." via Intellasia

Does anyone know anything more about this? I'd really appreciate comments. Or email me on graham at noodlepie.com if you prefer. More general background from Amnesty and Reporters without borders.

Technorati Tags: Vietnam, censorship, internet censorship, monitoring blogs

"the tools are all in place"

I wrote a piece for the Press Gazette while I was in London last week. It's about how the BBC plans to use social media - blogs, flickr, youtube, twitter etc. - in their coverage of the build up to the Turkish election at the end of July.

“This is an experiment to look at how a series of international reports can be spread through social media sites and hopefully reach new audiences,” says Richard Sambrook, director of BBC Global News. “We talk a lot about convergence – but we want to explore what that can really mean in international reporting.”

If anybody can remember in the very dim and distant, this is a theme I've been keenly interested in for a number of years. However, as Ben Hammersley - who'll be doing the reporting for the BBC - says, "the tools are all now in place" That wasn't quite the case a couple of years ago. Also, the ever growing popularity of social media site like facebook, twitter and the photo and video sharing sites illustrates just how easy these tools have grown to use. It's not the preserve of techies anymore.

I think the real biggie is time. To do a good social media job - with all the interaction that demands - on top of the old media job could potentially take an awful lot of time - especially the video and the interaction. Have you ever tried uploading a video to YouTube??? One video I uploaded took more than ten hours to appear. Most of the other stuff is fairly quick to do and even automated as Robin points out.

It'll be interesting to see what lessons old media outlets like the BBC learn from this "pilot project" and how, if it is successful, they will get other reporters to follow suit, in full or in part. FWIW - regardless of all the hype surrounding a lot of social media, I think if journalists have to choose one tool from the cannon, let it be del.icio.us - best collaborative research tool out there, IMO. Lastly, links to all my public social media accounts can be had in the top right column.

Update: some buzzback from readers here and here - which is gratifying.

Technorati Tags: pressgazette, BBC, social media reporting, journalism

What are the world's best food blogs?

I have my own ideas, but last I heard there are at least 200,000 food blogs in existence. That number's not decreasing and I don't think one person can know 200,000 of anything anyway, no matter who you are. If you have a strong view on this, feel free to voice it in the comment box. If you prefer you can email me. This is a for a feature I am writing this week. The end result will inevitably be subjective, but hopefully informed to a large extent by you. Beyond the knowledge picked up through the three or more years I've been food blogging, there are a few places I've already stopped by to help me with this piece,

• Food Blog Awards - 2004 - 2005 - 2006

• Food blog section at the Bloggies

• From the forums - Chowhound -  eGullet

• My (not at all up to date, but will update it...) copy of my food blog RSS feed.

• What are your favourite food blogs? - Serious Eats.

Plenty of other sources garnered over the years - foodpornwatch, kiplog, Elise, grabyourfork and the countless newspaper features, but I hope this post and my Twitter will throw a few pleasantly unexpected spanners into the final 10. I haven't written a word of this feature yet and I won't start it until, at the latest, Friday morning.

British journalism blogs

I put together a UK Journalists' blogroll for the resuscitated Press Gazette. These are journalists based in Britain blogging predominantly about journalism. This is not a blogroll of British journalist's blogs - that would look very different. Unfortuantely the Press Gazette does not have a web version of this.... grrrr.... However, 'Content Editor' Martin Stabe has all the links. Martin also has a fascinating, if baffling, graphic of relations between many of these folk, myself included.

Three points related to this. Firstly, social bookmarking and the networking of social bookmarkers is one of the best ways, maybe the best way, I gather information on niche topics I'm interested in, mostly on food or journalism, new media. I know of one award winning journalist who says he gets most of his story leads through social bookmarking.

Then there's the choice of bloggers for the feature. I discussed this with Martin. In the end I had around about another ten possibles who I chose not to include as they are not as tightly focussed on journalism. I then scoured all the possibles blogrolls to see if I'd missed anyone. Lastly, I used Twitter to ask for ideas. My Twitter network includes several journalists and bloggers. Jem twittered back a number of suggestions most of which I knew, some of which I didn't, including Vicky Watch. Reading this blog, I very quickly realised it had to be included. In a way this is a micro-example of using the social media tools to produce a networked effect.

Tenuously related to this is the ongoing debate about the demise of the foreign correspondent and the changes in the newsgathering process. Rebecca Mackinnon writes about this and links out to some great banter. She also mentions the Pulitzer Centre which seeks,

"to promote in-depth coverage of international affairs, focusing on topics that have been under-reported, mis-reported - or not reported at all. The Center accepts proposals from journalists who want to cover in-depth global stories but whose news organizations don't have the funds to support the reporting of these stories - or from freelancers who simply wouldn't have the financial backing to do these stories otherwise."

All very interesting. This, along with foreign correspondents and the increasing 'networking of journalism', is debated on this Radio Open Source programme, which I highly recommend you listen to.  There are tonnes of interesting points about social networking, multimedia reporting, use of NetVibes and MeMorandum to source stories etc. One of the interviewees, Alison Kaplan Sommer who is based in Tel Aviv, makes some good points about the practicalities during this period of transition between old media and participatory media that is predicted to dominate in the near future,

Is the independent expatriate blogger the new foreign correspondent?

In an ideal world - yes - I think a lot of this sadly is going to come down to the money. Whether or not people are able to support themselves, to support their blogs, to support their sites that offer in depth coverage of what's going on in the world both in terms of bloggers who are based overseas and in terms of the new entrusted citizen journalists. A lot of journalists from the United States have been spending 3 months, 6 months or a year in Iraq or abroad and they're either supported directly by their readership or by people sending them money to support their journalism or supported by advertisements on the website. Unfortunately, an amateur hobbyist blogger who's not getting paid for their endeavours is not going to be able to keep it up day after day, week after week, year  after year replacing or even enhancing the professional correspondents who are being paid by the wire services and the newspapers.

I'm not sure whether all hobbyists can't keep it up, although I agree it's far less likely. There's plenty to take from the podcast. I'm still pondering bits of it. But, I'll leave the last word to a commenter,

With the global reach of the new era of blogs, podcasts, and videoblogs, our foreign correspondents will not be trying to look the part.. they will actually be living-breathing the conflict they live in. Baghdad Burning, is an early example of this. But there is a whole generation of reporters coming very soon, reporting in depth and detail that the foreign correspondant only wished he/she could attain.

The journalist's weblog part 1

Thanks to all who dropped comments and sent me emails pointing me in the direction of journalists who blog. I'll be checking them all out in due course. The first installment, in a series of six, about blogging journalists is now up at journalism.co.uk. It's about Sandeep Junnarkar and his excellent Lives in Focus blog. Always on the look out for more...

Hanoi hits

Tomorrow morning I fly to Hanoi to work on a story for an American publication. I'll be looking for the best bars, restaurants, clothing, cookware and handicraft outlets in the Old Quarter and also in the area around Le Van Huu street. I have a good number of my own ideas, but - in hipster open source reporting mode - if you have any hot tips, please post a comment, drop me an email or IM me. I'll gladly check out all your recommendations and will likely include some of the best in the finished story.

Technorati Tags: Hanoi, Vietnam, open source reporting, Vietnamese food

Where are the journalists who blog?

I haven't been opening up much about work of late on noodlepie, that changes this week... I'm working on a mini-series for a UK publication about journalists who write blogs. Why do they blog? Is blogging changing the way they work? Isn't this whole blog thing all just a storm in a horses mouth? Does anyone really care about blogs apart from bloggers? I'm looking to talk to journalists who blog to try and find out why on earth they bother. If you know a good journalist/blogger, especially if you read one that you like, please post a comment, email or IM me. I'm doing the first one on Sandeep at Lives in Focus. One of the best out there I reckon.

Technorati Tags: journalism, blogging journalists, citizen journalism, open source reporting, blogs by journalists

Moblog Vietnam

Finished the moblogging story last night. All about using moblogs as promotional tools. Sent it at 6pm and this is my desk as I arrived this morning. The usual detritus and, aptly enough, a phone. I talked to the ever helpful  Alfie from MoblogUK, and uploader of that pic, for the story. I've never moblogged but, after hearing Alfie enthuse over the past year, I plan to start when I hit London in a few weeks. Alfie suggests,

"Buy an Orange sim card, will cost you £3. Orange have an unlimited daily pay as you go data plan for £1 per day, I use about 300mb per week :D which makes it the *best* prepay service in the UK imo."

300MB... that's some righteous, scary-freakish moblogging there. I'll struggle to match that level of output, but I'm looking forward to having some fun with it. Audio, video, pictorio. In Saigon I just use the prepaid cards for SMS and old fashioned phone calls. I have no idea what mobile phone data tariffs for uploading to the internet are like in Vietnam. Do you?

Technorati Tags: moblogging, Vietnam, journalism, Wemedia

Promotion and advertising via Moblogs

Starting to look at a story about the use of moblogs as promotional tools.

UPDATE: 24 hours later I have a commission from a UK mag. Still looking for different ways moblogs are being use to promote/market stuff.

Technorati Tags: journalism, moblog, advertising

Lives in Focus interview

I'll be chatting over Skype with Sandeep Junnarkar this Friday morning to discuss donation driven blog journalism projects. Sandeep is the brains behind Lives in Focus. I'm researching a feature about journalists who report niche stories using a combination of blogs, reader donations and/or other indepenedent funding. I'm most interested in hearing Sandeep's thoughts on the experience of working this way and how he thinks his method could be adapted. It should be interesting. Do you know of any other donation driven blog journalism projects? There's Back to Iraq. I'm in the process of finding others. Any help much appreciated.

Technorati Tags: journalism, citizen journalism, blogs