Technology
WATCHING THEM, WATCHING US
T
Michael Cross on the latest trends and kit
REVIEW
hey don’t like it up ‘em, journalists. As a profession, we’re among the most avid users of websites such as www.theyworkforyou. com that ruthlessly lay bare politicians’ productivity. However, when a site came along applying the same techniques to journalists, I heard outrage. Journalisted (www.journalisted. com) builds profiles of journalists by mapping articles from free news websites. At first, the basic site told you how many articles had appeared under your name, how long they were, and which subjects you covered most often. Colleagues howled about errors and – absurdly, I think – intrusions into privacy. But the site had genuine shortcomings, particularly its assumption that the only journalists that matter are those with bylines in nationals and the BBC. I certainly bristled at being labelled a Guardian journalist who produces only one article a week. If only... Over the past couple of years, however, the site has become more sophisticated. Journalists can now edit their profiles. We can add articles
WEBSITE SERVICES: MR SITE
If you’re starting up in business
– even to sell the odd article – you need a website. If you don’t have web skills and you’re in a hurry, you have a choice. Get someone else to do it for you, or use an off-the-shelf software and hosting service. As a control freak with no software skills, I took the latter course. I picked Mr Site (www.mrsite.co.uk) which bills itself as the takeaway website. The takeaway tag presumably dates from when we bought software in boxes: now nearly everyone will download from the web. It comes in beginner (£19.99), standard (£34.99) and pro (£99.99). I chose standard; reasoning that
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Colleagues howled about errors and – absurdly I think – intrusions into privacy
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basic would run out of pages and that I wouldn’t need the shopping cart and other business features of the £100 job. To my surprise, I found the package intuitive and easy to use. After registering a name, I chose a design from an array of templates. More or less at random, I selected Green Grass, a three-column layout with a banner along the top for my name and NUJ card. Next up, choose the number of pages and enter copy and links. Later, I added a blog. There are some frustrations. When entering copy, you can’t see what font it will appear in; there is a preview but it’s quite a slog to use. Also, the system doesn’t like having more than one window open at a time. And although the website can be viewed through every browser I’ve tried, the editing software doesn’t yet handle Google chrome.
from other sources and give details of career, education, awards or books published. Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, which funds the project, says: “If a journalist is commenting on global warming it can be helpful to know if they have a background in science.” Of course there are plenty of journalist directories, not least the NUJ’s Freelance Directory. But I think Journalisted can fill a useful role in covering staffers as well as freelances. It’ll never be 100 per cent comprehensive. I can’t see many editors bothering to create profiles . There’s also a question of sustainability. The site is free to all. Whether it has the resources to cope with tens of thousands of journalists adding, updating and arguing about their profiles remains to be seen. More serious, perhaps, is the threat to the site’s crown jewels – the database of published articles – if newspaper websites disappear behind paywalls. However, its basic philosophy, that journalists should be subjected to the same sort of scrutiny as others in society, is here to stay. We’d better get used to it.
Not everyone is so won over. One friend (who’s a bit more web savvy than me) said the software drove her mad and she asked for – and got – her money back. Another warned against the email feature, which I don’t use. Others swear by the free blogging software Wordpress. But for the moment, I’m happy. Mr Site is right if you want a basic website quickly; don’t mind if it isn’t at the cutting edge of original design; and don’t want to entrust your web presence to a third party. After a few weeks I was even confident enough to knock up a website for a neighbourhood association. I had a site up within an hour, and for a brief moment basked in the light of being thought a techie genius. It’s a cliche to say that Mr Site does what it says on the tin, but for me it does.
20 | theJournalist
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24/5/10 17:25:45