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| Interviewing Paul Bradshaw at the Birmingham City University. |
Paul Bradshaw stands out as one the most renowned researchers on online journalism in the UK. International speaker on digital journalism, he is the author, among several publications, of The Online Journalism Handbook: Skills to survive and thrive in the digital age (now in its second edition, from 2017) and the co-author of Mobile-First Journalism: Producing News for Social and Interactive Media (2018). He is also the course leader for the MA in Data Journalism and the MA Multiplatform and Mobile Journalism at Birmingham City University.
Bradshaw is regarded as one of the most influential journalism bloggers since he started publishing the Online Journalism Blog in 2004, a pioneer site where he posts comments, analyses and links covering innovation in online journalism and topics such as citizen journalism, blogging, podcasts, interactive storytelling, automated journalism or user generated content. Moreover, he works as a consulting data journalist in the BBC England data unit.
We met at Birmingham City University School of Media and had a chat on the challenges that media outlets face nowadays to better reach audiences and regain trust from them all in the new multiplatform scenario.
- You opened the path to others some years ago when you launched your blog and conducted new research on online journalism. How have studies on online journalism evolved since then?
- Well I think research has exploded really. We've moved from trying to work out what this new medium was and what to do with it technically to a really wide range of research on the audiences, the communities, and their role in terms of circulation and producing journalism.
That's really interesting, but still we haven't really tapped into that. We've got the consumption side of things and the business models side of things. And lots of different types of digital journalism, so data journalism being just wonderful -the literature on data journalism alone is really quite substantial-, and all of it is more global. You've got mobile journalism, drone journalism, VR, visual journalism and all sorts of different types of journalism. You could read everything really but now you can't. You can pick one part of it and still find lots and lots of literature.
And it's become more critical, which is how it should be. We've definitely moved on from a point of view which is focusing purely on all the good, on things that could be done, a kind of democratization of journalism if you like, to a more balanced understanding goal with any new technology there are.
There have been improvements, and also negative sides of it. Perhaps at the moment we're probably focusing a bit too much on the negatives. We've started to take for granted some of the positives. But we should keep reminding ourselves how amazing the diversity of voices is while at the same time we have all the problems of fake news and trolls and surveillance we need to deal with.
- To what extent media outlets should take these new technologies and new possibilities we have more seriously to fight against all those problems you mention?
- We need a better understanding of audiences and how much that has already changed. Before online journalism we had a general idea of how many people read or watched or listened to our journalism. We assumed that people trusted us and believed when we were part of the facts. And what we're learning now because of more understanding of our audiences, because of more research, is that we can't take it for granted. But we as journalists are starting to take responsibility for not just reporting the news but reporting it in a way that is going to be believed.
I was at a conference last week where someone presented a research on Donald Trump and his use of Twitter. One of the things they'd done research on was when he lied about the crowd sizes of his inauguration and they showed those pictures to people who'd voted for Trump. These people still believed that the image of the crowd was bigger. And even when they presented those people with a statement from Trump's press secretary regretting it he had been part of this lie, they still insisted that it was not a lie.
Their conclusion was when a fact becomes politicized it stops being a fact and it becomes an expression of identity. And that's the sort of thing that as journalists we face. First of all, it's massively depressing to us to think that even when we report the facts people are not going to believe that. But at least we can move past far and think 'OK, so what does work'. And there's some really exciting stuff around using viral techniques like those to spread fact checking and using the language of viral media to chase those lies.
"When a fact becomes politicized it stops being a fact and it becomes an expression of identity. It's depressing to think that even when we report the facts people are not going to believe that"
- It seems that we are going farther from the audience, especially the youngest, who are getting access to news through other channels, not through the media. So in what way does participatory journalism would be a way to engage them and draw their attention to come back to the news outlets?
- We still are at a stage where we are involving communities in news production as much as we could or should. And that is a really important way to establish a relationship of trust. It really annoys me when there is research that asks about trust and says how much do you trust The Sun newspaper or Twitter. But we're not reading Twitter, we're reading our friends or our family on Twitter. We're reading a whole range of people and actually our trust levels will vary.
So if we're collaborating with people and there are some interesting collaborative models which are rebuilding that relationship with the media that used to exist and where a journalist is part of our community. A good example would be The Bristol Cable. Their motto is really interesting to watch.
- Maybe it's easier for the local media to involve the community and offer them something different.
- Yes, it's interesting to see how national media can work in that environment. The Bureau Local is another example which is looking at different investigations and almost having to rebuild its community each time. And I think that has certain challenges. But that trust issue, that engagement issue, is one that some news organizations are grappling with but still they've almost moved away from that. We had that period of time when there was a lot more interest in crowdsourcing and collaboration. And now other issues have overtaken that.
- A couple of weeks ago the Reuters Institute for the Study Journalism published a report saying that the Public Service Media have a problem to engage younger audiences because they are not doing a better use of social media to connect them. I don't know if at BBC, where you are working with, it's happening something similar or not.
- I would disagree a little bit with this. It's easy to say in a sense of stereotypes we're not reaching young people because we're not doing things on social media. Yes, there's an element of that but it's more about the public service media is always going to be limited in the voice but it can have. And frankly if you look at the outlets are doing it well like BuzzFeed or The Huffington Post, they're able to speak in a language and take a position in a way that the BBC for example just cannot do. However I've been in many meetings or events in the BBC where it's being talked about and there's a lot of effort around appealing to younger audiences. But fundamentally you're never going to reach that audience, if you're limited in the way that you can write, if you can't talk in their language regardless of what platform you're on.
- We still are at a stage where we are involving communities in news production as much as we could or should. And that is a really important way to establish a relationship of trust. It really annoys me when there is research that asks about trust and says how much do you trust The Sun newspaper or Twitter. But we're not reading Twitter, we're reading our friends or our family on Twitter. We're reading a whole range of people and actually our trust levels will vary.
So if we're collaborating with people and there are some interesting collaborative models which are rebuilding that relationship with the media that used to exist and where a journalist is part of our community. A good example would be The Bristol Cable. Their motto is really interesting to watch.
- Maybe it's easier for the local media to involve the community and offer them something different.
- Yes, it's interesting to see how national media can work in that environment. The Bureau Local is another example which is looking at different investigations and almost having to rebuild its community each time. And I think that has certain challenges. But that trust issue, that engagement issue, is one that some news organizations are grappling with but still they've almost moved away from that. We had that period of time when there was a lot more interest in crowdsourcing and collaboration. And now other issues have overtaken that.
- A couple of weeks ago the Reuters Institute for the Study Journalism published a report saying that the Public Service Media have a problem to engage younger audiences because they are not doing a better use of social media to connect them. I don't know if at BBC, where you are working with, it's happening something similar or not.
- I would disagree a little bit with this. It's easy to say in a sense of stereotypes we're not reaching young people because we're not doing things on social media. Yes, there's an element of that but it's more about the public service media is always going to be limited in the voice but it can have. And frankly if you look at the outlets are doing it well like BuzzFeed or The Huffington Post, they're able to speak in a language and take a position in a way that the BBC for example just cannot do. However I've been in many meetings or events in the BBC where it's being talked about and there's a lot of effort around appealing to younger audiences. But fundamentally you're never going to reach that audience, if you're limited in the way that you can write, if you can't talk in their language regardless of what platform you're on.
- In a multimedia language?
- Not exactly in a multimedia language but, for instance, BuzzFeed's, which is quite pro diversity, campaigning in a way, it's sassy, it's using gifts and listicles,... That's not just about using Twitter, is more about a language and a culture.
The BBC is a big strand. I've said in the past it's like the Switzerland of news, because it's neutral, in the middle. And so it's got mass appeal which has to have. It can't have mass appeal and also be really successful with a younger audience. And also it's a destination organization that people get to towards the end of our careers. The Guardian has the same problem: people reach there and stay there. So the workforce is going to be older than other news organizations like BuzzFeed or Fox. So again you've got that lack of internal knowledge. It could be better on Twitter but actually the BBC is very good on Twitter and it shows a lot of resources into it.
- Actually they´re doing a pretty good job through their BBC News Labs, where they don't stop testing new things everyday... Taking into account the main challenges and problems that media outlets have to face in this new scenario, in what way sports can be used by media as an appealing content to reach those younger audiences and draw their attention?
- It's a really good question actually. We've been talking of the challenge reaching younger audiences with Huffington Post that have partnered with Birmingham City University to launch The HuffPost School of Journalism next month. And a lot of that is about wanting to understand how young people consume news and how can bring those voices into their organization and understanding that culture. And a part of that is for sports journalism. Some of the developments in sport are issues like Kaepernick and the racial protests in the NFL, some about women's football and women's football commentators, around race and football again and trolling on Twitter because of discussions we're having about finances in women's sport. We're talking about doing a story on that. So it means using sports as a way to tackle broader issues, social issues. And that's something that the Huffington Post can do. I suspect the BBC would be trickier because there is always concern and fear of being seen as taking a side.
But I think the other battleground is that cultural battle of, as you have mentioned, sports journalism is being neglected by research. I think the problem with people who study sports journalism is getting them to move from metro parks to something deeper. In terms of education, when we're teaching sports journalists, the major issue is how to move beyond the sports celebrities world, and even the celebrity interviewer, to those broader issues. And that involves things like sensitivity and ethics. That's a very important.
- It may be even more difficult when those future journalists follow some TV shows and radio programmes where sports is taken as mere entertainment rather than something more serious. This is a traditional approach, a conventional mindset.
- Yes, it is really tricky and to some extent this is a game where audiences come in. To some extent sometimes fans don't want to hear the bad news. You know, it is escapism. And it's a really odd. It's a massive business, for instance what happens to the whole ongoing FIFA scandal and the World Cup. I don't know how I'm going to feel watching the World Cup in Qatar because inside this is a complete sham. But at the same time you want to enjoy it and escape into it. To some extent politics suffer some of the same, it becomes a story of personalities and who's winning and who's losing rather than what the actual issues are.
"When teaching sports journalists, the major issue is how to move beyond the sports celebrities world to those broader (social) issues. And that involves things like sensitivity and ethics"
- Actually they´re doing a pretty good job through their BBC News Labs, where they don't stop testing new things everyday... Taking into account the main challenges and problems that media outlets have to face in this new scenario, in what way sports can be used by media as an appealing content to reach those younger audiences and draw their attention?
- It's a really good question actually. We've been talking of the challenge reaching younger audiences with Huffington Post that have partnered with Birmingham City University to launch The HuffPost School of Journalism next month. And a lot of that is about wanting to understand how young people consume news and how can bring those voices into their organization and understanding that culture. And a part of that is for sports journalism. Some of the developments in sport are issues like Kaepernick and the racial protests in the NFL, some about women's football and women's football commentators, around race and football again and trolling on Twitter because of discussions we're having about finances in women's sport. We're talking about doing a story on that. So it means using sports as a way to tackle broader issues, social issues. And that's something that the Huffington Post can do. I suspect the BBC would be trickier because there is always concern and fear of being seen as taking a side.
But I think the other battleground is that cultural battle of, as you have mentioned, sports journalism is being neglected by research. I think the problem with people who study sports journalism is getting them to move from metro parks to something deeper. In terms of education, when we're teaching sports journalists, the major issue is how to move beyond the sports celebrities world, and even the celebrity interviewer, to those broader issues. And that involves things like sensitivity and ethics. That's a very important.
- It may be even more difficult when those future journalists follow some TV shows and radio programmes where sports is taken as mere entertainment rather than something more serious. This is a traditional approach, a conventional mindset.
- Yes, it is really tricky and to some extent this is a game where audiences come in. To some extent sometimes fans don't want to hear the bad news. You know, it is escapism. And it's a really odd. It's a massive business, for instance what happens to the whole ongoing FIFA scandal and the World Cup. I don't know how I'm going to feel watching the World Cup in Qatar because inside this is a complete sham. But at the same time you want to enjoy it and escape into it. To some extent politics suffer some of the same, it becomes a story of personalities and who's winning and who's losing rather than what the actual issues are.
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