After the once anonymous blogger Nightjack worked his way back into the news this week as part of the hacking scandal, it reminded me of a post I’d been meaning to write for a while about anonymity.

Anonymous comments on Kent Online have always been a love-hate relationship. Yes, dealing with readers ringing in and complaining about specific comments does get tedious, but thanks to them we got great tip offs and extra leads for stories, as well as interactivity.

But then it was decided that in future any comments would have to be linked to a registered account.

I see the idea behind the new policy as previously mentioned – we’ve had someone impersonate Gillingham FC’s Paul Scally, we get phone calls from residents complaining about unsuitable and rude comments and no one has the time to sit and monitor everything being said, but I always thought the positive aspects outweighed the negative.

Before I joined the company a Southeastern whistleblower commented anonymously on a story and was able to voice his frustrations and the inner workings of a company which was previously unheard of. We also find out the names of unnamed people who have died in sudden circumstances through comments. And while I agree with solicitor Magnus Boyd of London law firm Carter-Ruck that when anonymous people can “take less responsibility for what they are writing than they might if they had to put their name to it,” without the cloak of anonymity, there are many stories that could not be told.

As Emily Bell stated when Nightjack’s identity was revealed: “The unintended consequences of its action will be to restrict the free flow of information rather than to encourage it.” I think that rings true here too.

Sure the move will probably stem the tide of malicious comments, but I think the odd phone call of someone complaining is worth dealing with for the other benefits anonymity can offer.

Facebook interactivity has increased since the move as we’ve been putting an extra focus on it to help generate some interaction, but the hundreds of comments we used to get have been reduced to a handful.

- Phone call of the week: censoring rude words: last week I laughed down the phone with a woman who asked how she was supposed to comment on a story about Dickens when it kept on blocking out the first four letters of his surname, Dick. 

This year’s lecture was titled: From Film to Twitter – the Media Revolution: Is the Golden Age of Journalism Come or Gone?

I gave myself the night off and for once didn’t take notes, but upon realising that no one from the Centre for Journalism will post the video until Monday, I thought I’d mention a few things from memory.

Let’s get this out of the way first, shall we? Jon Snow’s tie – yes, it was as bright as ever, and in case you were wondering why they’re always so loud, Snow said when they re-designed the C4 studio he realised he was the dullest thing in it, so he brightened up the ties.

So back to the ‘golden age’ – he says it is now.

“This is the most exciting time to be alive.”

However, he did tell the students present that we would be working for crumbs. He added that the use of free interns in the media industry is ‘alarming’. Snow named the Independent as a frequent user of interns.

However, whilst he believes it is the most exciting time, he also noted how people don’t want to pay for it, saying: “”How do you monetise what we do? People can get what we do for free”. But, he said, when Gordon Brown resigned who had the helicopters in the air following the car’s every move? Was it Google? No, it was the news channels documenting this historic event.

The problem now is that people don’t need the channels’ archives because much is put on YouTube for free.

You should be able to get a full report on the evening from the CfJ on Monday.

Here’s a list of tweets people made during the night:

“For some reason, however, Baroness Worthington — Bryony to friends — states that the aide will ideally ‘like children’. Can it be that she’s looking for a free babysitter? Some who saw her ad on a House of Commons website thought so.

And lo and behold, within a week, the ad was gone — with colleagues suspecting Labour apparatchiks ordered her to take it down.

Says Bryony, 38: ‘It’s been implied I’m trying to get away without paying someone. But since my Lords role doesn’t have a salary, I can’t be expected to provide payment for an assistant. I only took down the post early because I’ve been inundated with applications and wanted to reply to each one personally.’”

So how personally did she reply to these applicants? Well, not very personally at all. One prospective applicant sent an email asking for more information about the role, particularly in regards to ‘like children’, no CV or covering letter was ever sent and yet this was the response our prospective intern received:

“Many thanks for sending your cv and covering letter for the role of volunteer parliamentary assistant to Baroness Worthington, as advertised on www.w4mp.org.

I received a large volume of applications all of which I have read with interest. I am sorry to inform you that on this occasion you did not make it on to the shortlist.

I hope you find a suitable role soon and wish you all the very best for the future.

Thanks again for your interest,

Best wishes
Bryony Worthington”

Now if she really had read them all ‘with interest’ she would have realised that the previously mentioned person didn’t even apply for the position. Very personal, Baroness Worthington.

Photo credit: Labourlist.org

Right now I’m half way through a project on the exploitation of interns. It’s both a radio piece and a multimedia project, so I’ll link to it once it’s finished. Some of the stories I’ve heard during my investigation are beyond shocking. So it will be worth a listen when it’s finished (I hope). Similarly, if you’re an intern and have worked for free, get in contact.

Here is a tiny bit of my multimedia project – mapping MPs and constituencies who are advertising for unpaid interns. Intern Anonymous blogged about it here, although the word ‘fantastic’ is a bit of an exaggeration when talking about me.

My other project is about trains. Doesn’t sound overly exciting, but Southeastern Trains never fails to make good story material. It’s going to be map-based, but it’s early stages, so I will say no more.

We have a live online news day on the 25^th February at the Centre for Journalism, which is often worth a click on our website to see. The same evening Jon Snow is presenting a lecture at Kent Uni, Medway. It’s normally open to outsiders, so if you want to come you can crash on my sofa.

It’s been busy as usual, although not for the usual reasons.

My business, PhotoBook Boutique, launched at the beginning of December. The software design is mine, the website design is not. I think we are going to have a relaunch at some point when we have more time, and make the website more attractive.

I’ve finally finished a rather long filming and editing job.

My final project is moving along slowly and there is another documentary I want to make during Easter break before I lose use of the CfJ kit… So if anyone other journalism students are interested – let me know.

As for now, I’m taking a break for the rest of the year – although I can’t say I update this website a whole lot anyway.

I might pop-up on Twitter/Facebook every now and then to keep up with what is happening, but if I don’t speak to any of you have a great Christmas and winter break.

I’ll be back in the new year, without the flu, and with more commitment to my website.

All the best,

Becci

She said: “When you send out your CVs make sure that you have watched something that the production company has produced.”

“What does surprise me with people who come and work with us is that they don’t watch TV enough and they’re not reading newspapers enough. People should be reading op/ed pages, they should know what is going on in the news and be fluent in world affairs.”

“People will be interviewing you who are actually obsessive about news and journalism. I still listen to all the news bulletins I can.”

She said it is part of the daily fabric of a journalist’s life.

She also added that any kind of experience can be helpful for working in the media “so if it takes you a little time to get going don’t worry about it” and she noted the importance of “networking like crazy”.

Reevell said she started out knowing that she wanted to be a journalist and now avoids being caught up in management too much by ensuring she is still making programmes, because it is what she loves.

When starting out she applied to the BBC and was rejected because at that time “they all came from Oxford or Cambridge”.

Later on she applied to the BBC again and got onto a course. She was one of the first intakes not from Oxbridge.  She said: “I do remember being very patronised and someone said to me ‘Isn’t it marvellous that they are taking people like you on the course.’”

She also noted how few women used to be in TV management positions at the BBC, adding that she would often be the only woman on a course.

She said the BBC used to be like a “gentlemen’s club” before the invention of electronic newsgathering. Everyone used to go off to the bar once they’d met their deadlines, but technology caused the end of deadlines.

Anne Reevell has worked for Radio 4 for more than 20 years, she was Chief Producer of Network Radio in Manchester, Deputy Home Editor at BBC TV News, started her own company, Moonbeam Films, producing documentaries for a wide range of outlets, and has made one of the most watched documentaries Diary of a Princess/Diana in Angola, amongst more.

Shiv Malik, investigative reporter and co-author of Jilted Generation – How Britain has bankrupted its youth, talked about the dislike towards investigative journalists as you are trying to find out things people want to keep quiet.

He said your notes are “absolutely vital and essential” and that the “Police are like vampires… If you have something (i.e. notes) don’t let them in.”

He offered the advice of joining the union “because they were the people who helped me out when I most needed it”. The NUJ and the Sunday Times split the cost of his court case.

“It is very expensive and the only people who can really help you out are the NUJ.”

Malik added how big investigative pieces, such as Seymour Hersh’s My Lai investigation and Watergate started small: “They were very small things to start with and they ran each story and each story will make you a bit of money, then people come to you as well.”

He also gave a recent example of Ian Cobain’s torture pieces, which started out as a small story. Cobain found a reference a couple of paragraphs down in an article about prisoners being tortured and consequently it became a huge thing.

Other advice offered was the need to have a connection to a news desk and that your name and your reputation are incredibly important.

He finished the conference noting the amount of money that gets spent on investigating celebrities instead of other things happening in the world nowadays.

Marc Vallée is a photojournalist who has worked on major investigations on police surveillance of protesters and journalists.

He said investigative journalists are “obsessive geeky people” who “have to shine a light on the darker stuff the state does supposedly in our name when in fact it is actually taking away our rights and our liberties”.

He told the audience how in 2006 he was covering a protest in Parliament Square and ended up in the hospital and unable to work for a month. He sued the Met police adding: “These officers take a very keen interest in journalists and particularly photographers.”

After recovering from his injuries he went back to the streets and noted how the police knew his name and asked, “how are you doing?”

He said: “It gets a bit more sinister and chilling when you find you have a fist in the back of you and they are still calling your name.”

In 2009 he had three front-page stories in the Guardian.

He said Twitter was useful in finding out things and where to be.

When discussing crowd sourcing he said: “It takes the newspapers to get the crowd sourcing out to a larger public.”

He expects there will be a heavy police presence at the student protests next week and “Politically with what’s happening with the cuts etc. there are going to be more protests and conflicts and out of that there’s going to be a lot of stories.”

Heather Brooke, Freedom of Information campaigner and author of The Silent State and Your Right to Know, was also on the panel. She explained her work into the expenses scandal, which she was working on for five years:

“I came to Britain and I was a bit fed up with daily journalism, so I went into publicity.”

“Then I got my first apartment and started to get involved in the community because I had a lot of problems. I wanted to know what was going on. I didn’t understand Britain, how the government worked or anything.”

From this she decided to write a book about FOI and also aimed at helping her “understand how Britain worked”, involving “Where is power? Who exercises it?” She notes that the public are “really quite negligible”.

“I thought FOI was really going to benefit things in Britain. The man on the street was going to be able to ask really direct questions to the man in power.”

During this time she made hundreds of FOIs.

“You have to be really obsessive to be an investigative journalist. Don’t let things go.”

She described how the House of Commons were very obstructive in answering her requests, especially about their expenses.

Brooke had conducted a similar investigation in America, where she lived before moving to Britain. However, she didn’t find a huge scandal in America, possibly linked to the fact that “anyone could rifle through the boxes”.

The UK government kept delaying the time they were going to publish the information and then finally someone leaked it and the Telegraph bought it.

Talking about crowd sourcing for investigations she said that whilst no story came from the Guardian’s expenses crowd sourcing experiment, she believes that “in the future we are going to see more”.

When asked about funding her journalism she said: “You get more money for the fewer facts you have in your articles,” saying that she wrote many opinion pieces to make money, and those made more than her actual investigations.

She is currently working on a book about WikiLeaks

Atangana, an exiled journalist from Cameroon is currently fighting for his right to remain in the UK after receiving death threats. In a place where the state feed the media, he faced censorship from his own paper and was arrested by President Biya’s security forces, where he was detained for 40 days, during which he was locked in a flooded cell, tortured, suffered from malnutrition, chronic diarrhoea and food poisoning.

He escaped through bribery and fled to the UK where ever since he has been fighting his battle to stay. If he is deported back to Cameroon he is expected to face torture or death.

He said that whilst he has currently escaped there are many more journalists stuck there facing the same treatment. Atangana added that Cameroon and Zimbabwe share the same level of corruption, where other journalists on the panel had come from.

Jennifer Dube is a reporter for The Standard in Zimbabwe and faces similar fears. She told the conference that only last Friday she was approached by a man who asked which paper she was working for. She said: I questioned why he asked me out of everyone and you just get scared.”

She added that arrest is even worse when faced by female journalists and that they encounter problems in the newsrooms.

“Female journalists get discouraged. They face stigmatisation and discrimination based on gender. People think you have loose morals. We don’t have as many female journalists taking up senior posts.”

She also said that sexual harassment was a problem, not only in the newsroom, but when talking to sources as well. However, the NUJ is currently working to fight the stigma around female journalists.

Dube said that whilst many female students study journalism at college, many don’t go on to become journalists because of these problems, or because after taking an internship they are married off and it is no longer possible to be a journalist.

Foster Dongozi is the General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists. He said: “Journalists are never safe in Zimbabwe.”

The coalition in the country said that journalists should be shot or hung if they wrote critically about the president. He said: “That came as a shock.”

Dongozi also discussed a recent case where journalists spent time in filthy police cells and on being released were faced with the charge of being a criminal. He expects momentum to build around this in the near future, especially as they are making an appeal to the High Court to challenge it.

Jim Boumelha, President of the International Federation of Journalists added that the killings of journalists have increased and not just in conflict zones. He said the biggest chunk of journalists die in domestic situations and that “Mexico has become one of the most dangerous countries to work in as a journalist.”

He said, “Journalism is a great life” although it is now harder to get in to.

“You need to be nosy, to get on with people, and you need to be able to write and be accurate.”

He noted the value of getting experience whilst at university and said it was a mistake on his part for doing very little whilst there. He then failed to get a job when leaving university and was forced into taking a postgraduate journalism course at Cardiff.

Whilst some journalists belittle journalism courses, Maguire said they’re good as “you can hit the ground running”.

Hi career started on the Western Morning News, where he spent three years. He said experiences like death knocking and learning to deal with people sensitively prepares you for your future career.

He also worked for six months on a trade magazine, the New Civil Engineer; the Press Association for two years where he learned to work quickly; the Daily Telegraph for over four months under the editorship of Max Hastings; the Mirror for four years, until falling out with Piers Morgan, a “kid that just wanted to make a noise”; and the Guardian, which he jokingly described as his “break from journalism”.

He added that you need luck to get a break in journalism and determination to be able to take the knockbacks. Maguire told the students he wrote 60 job letters after leaving university and got turned down by them all.

He also offered advice and situations to avoid for students about to embark on work experience: “We had someone on work experience who thought he was on the Daily Mail.”

He also said to arrive on time and not to turn up looking like you’re going clubbing; some turn up in high heels which would be inappropriate for walking should they get sent out on a job.

You need ideas: “All editors complain about reporters sitting like they are in a taxi rank. If you have an idea go to the desk and say it.” Whilst there is a balance that needs to be found between being keen and being pushy, Maguire says at least they will talk about you if you’re pushy.

And one final piece of advice: “If you don’t know something don’t try to show it.”

Helene Mulholland, politics reporter at The Guardian said her first reporting job was at 35 years old. She did three weeks working at Newsnight, had a slot at The Guardian, and a week at the Independent. She left the Indy after two days because they were using her “as a secretary”, and to her it felt like “exploitation”.

She said you shouldn’t “sacrifice who you are just for the next job”.

She noted difficulties in journalism, such as no “equal playing field”, but added, “don’t get angry, get even”. You need to stick with it.

“Before I decided to go for it I thought journalists were very cut throat, hardcore, not very nice people, because that’s the reputation they had.” However, after her work experience she realised this representation of journalists was wrong and decided to pursue a career in it.

However, she said: “You don’t have to be a certain type of person or personality” or be the most confident, you just have to “act like the journalist you want to be and it soon becomes your second skin”.

She also offered the following advice:

- If you don’t know anyone in journalism, start mixing with journalists.

- Be ready to adapt in the new multiplatform world, but make sure you aren’t working longer and ridiculous hours – your union will serve you well here.

- You don’t have to be brilliant across all types of media. You need to be able to do a broadcast, but as long as you can get the message across that’s what matters most.

- Notice the organisation’s house style because people like that. It makes your copy cleaner.

- Speed will come with time. If you are not the quickest person, don’t worry it will get easier.

- Never sacrifice speed for a standard because if you get something wrong it’s on your shoulders.

- Be prepared to go and do something else for a while until the climate improves.

- Think long and hard about working for free; it is about self-respect as well. There’s a ‘pebble in a pond’ effect and you all pay the price.

- Be brave enough to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that” to an editor.

Mulholland also warns about the use of Twitter where a young journalist on work experience was tweeting critically about an interviewee, severing all future links with that person.

Maguire agreed stating you can tweet all day about the newsroom, but they won’t give you a job there, or maybe anywhere else – it’s a small world.

Paul Mason, Economics Editor, Newsnight worked as a music lecturer before going into journalism at the bottom, subbing.

Having worked on Newsnight for years he has watched it change with the advent of rolling news. He said you have to deliver much quicker nowadays. Stories, which they used to call ‘investigations’, are now being made in 48 hours, instead of two weeks. The danger is that some other person gets the story when everyone is moving so fast.

Here are his top ten tips for future journalists:

1. Be good at journalism – find things out, meet deadlines, know what’s happening, watch the news/read the papers, go to places.
2. Specialise in something that you can bring yourself to care about/ that’s relevant/ that might be in demand.
3. Be low maintenance/ zero bullshit – do what needs to be done quickly, talk about the story not journalism, you are up against “the tranquil consciousness of an effortless superiority” – emulate it, teamwork and logistics are key in TV, know the law and the rules.
4. Read widely, read fast, read grown up stuff – editors read books: they know what’s in the papers before they’re out, don’t waste time reading crap, don’t just read as if the world started when you turned 16, follow your instinct crazily from one mindblowing book to the next.
5. Write well, write fast, write translucent prose – Orwell: Politics and the English Language, Robert McKee: Story, The New Journalism: Tom Wolfe, Harlan County USA: Barbara Kopple, Kerouac: Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.
6. Manage your contacts – everybody you meet could be a contact, file them and make notes about them, guard them jealously, work them like crop rotation. He said contacts are like “tapping into the mother load”.
7. Network relentlessly – Brits are too shy: imagine you are from California, get a business card, find out where people you need to know hang out, get your face known/associated with a skill-set, ideas etc., mix with journalists.
8. Abandon your ideology – write the truth.
9. What is your story? Always have a story to pitch to somebody. Always be thinking: what’s the story nobody’s covering, listen to the zeitgeist.
10. Be the journalist you are trying to be.

Peter Simmonds, Assistant-Editor of BBC TV News, visited the Centre for Journalism today.

During his journalistic career he has worked across commercial radio, Sky News, 5 Live, BBC World News and more.

Simmonds has spent the last 16 years at the BBC, during which he says ‘things have changed a lot’.

“When I started there wasn’t any online journalistic presence.”

He also added that the ‘BBC used multimedia quite slowly at first’.

When asked the question of tips for getting a job he said when he was starting out he ‘managed to get a job in the downturn’.

He offered the following tips for journalism students:

- Get experience and get yourself seen.

- Find out a good story and find out as much about it as you can about it.

- Ideas and treatment are the most important things to bring into the newsroom.

- Embrace everything that’s going to come along.

- Be prepared for an interview: “If you can’t even research the programme how are you going to research a story for the programme?”