A group called Matter  has illuminated a fascinating fact about journalism in our time this week.
The San Francisco based group has posted a project on kickstarter.com, a website which enables entrepreneurs to raise money from the public.
Matter asked to raise $50,000 for publishing a weekly “single piece of top-tier long-form journalism about big issues in technology and science. That means no cheap reviews, no snarky opinion pieces, no top ten lists. Just one unmissable story”.

The group explains that proper in-depth investigative journalism costs money, which is why media is constantly cutting down on it. They “developed a way to support independent, global, in-depth reporting about science and technology, two subjects that are close to our hearts. We’re going to use it to build MATTER, the new home for the best journalism about the future. And we need you to help us make it happen.”
It is hard to tell what the product of Matter would look like. It would depend on the quality of the journalists they will pick and the subject they choose to research. Some of the players who feature in their promotional video are known for their involvement in serious and innovative websites such as Metafilter, Reddit and Flipboard, and the group seems to have contributors for Science, the Economist, The Guardian and other publications all known for their serious coverage of science and technology in its stable.

But one thing is clear: within 38 hours of placing their bid for funding, they’ve met their target pledge. As this blog post is being written, the public pledge stands at $105,233, and they still have 18 days to raise more.
The public gave it a loud and clear “yes” to investigative journalism, and to “stories that matter” before having been told the name of one correspondent or made aware of the content of one of the stories. And that public has pledged to put its money where its mouth is. Across the ocean, totally not connected to Matter in any way except from the mutual commitment to professional journalism, everybody at GRN had one thing to say to that: Wow.

The broadcasters and media moguls who constantly cut the budgets for investigative journalism argue that the public is not interested in the stories it invokes, and that the investment just does not justify itself.
Though often, as last year’s event at News International proved, those who want investigative journalism to die may well be those who have much to hide.
Matter’s Evan Doll says: “If the content does not exist, people should not be aware that they should be demanding it.” There’s no doubt that it is easy to sell the public rotten goods based on celebrity gossip, obvious news stories and PR statements presented as news. Then complain that the public is stupid, but is there a place in the market for an alternative to that? Matter’s fundraising success leaves some place for careful optimism.
I found Doll’s comment interesting because of an experiment we carried out at GRN three years ago. Based on a similar hunch, namely that the public wants more investigative journalism, we started a website called Global For Me (www.globalfm.com). GFM invited the public to suggest stories, or to choose between avenues of research we have put on offer, and to bid towards them. A story that would get funded, we promised, would be investigated, written and videoed by one of our leading journalists. To our surprise, the public was not responsive. To paraphrase Doll’s words – if they didn’t know about it, how could they have asked for it?
Another thing that transpires is that the public is willing to relinquish the fashionable concept of “choice” for some good old fashioned professionalism. They sniffed at GFM’s offer to choose the focus of the investigations, saying, effectively “this is your job, mate, you are the media, you tell us what’s important”.
The public wants choice but it also wants hierarchy of content and somebody trustworthy to decide what that hierarchy is. This has been shown quite clearly by the success of the websites affiliated to established newspapers compared to that of websites without an affiliation to established media.
When people really want to know what’s going on, they click on the link to the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, or whatever their newspaper/broadcaster/website of choice may be. They don’t want to decide what to investigate, they want somebody to make an interesting call on that, conduct that research professionally, and present it to them in an attractive and gripping way.
GRN’s success and the quick fundraising victory of Matter indicate that news consumers, while embracing the technological offers of the 21st century in terms of how they get their news, are rightly reluctant to accept the bogus idea that “everybody is a journalist”. Journalism is a vocation with real and measurable professional demands, regardless of whether it is consumed on large paper sheets or viewed on a mobile phone’s screen.

The rules and ethics of it have not changed much, despite the fascinating developments of the information revolution, and an in-depth journalistic investigation can not be replaced by a press release or a citizen reporting from their balconies any more than a professional plumber can be replaced by a DIY savvy neighbour. Unless you want your radiator leaking all over your carpet.

The terrible deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik have drawn journalists’s attention again to questions of safety. What kind of risks should journalists take in order to cover a story and what responsibility do media vessels who use the services of freelancers hold towards their safety?

Syria’s uprising is one of the most fascinating stories of the passing few years. A country so closed, sealed and segregated that very few journalists ever entered it, a notoriously oppressive regime, the heroic courage of a people who suddenly rise against it and the shocking brutality on part of the government that tries to oppress it. All this in the context of the Arab Spring, of the tension between Israel and Iran and of the long shadow Syria casts over Lebanon. The interest in the story, however, is well matched by the dangers involved in covering it. The Syrian regime made its hostility to the media, local and international, crystal clear. Nobody in their right minds desires to spend time in any prison cells, let alone in Assad’s notorious dens.
Even a fleeting encounter in the street with Syria’s famous Muhabarat (intelligence services) can be highly unpleasant, to put it mildly.

A few GRN correspondents have been in Syria over the last few months, and we still have journalists reporting from there now. Normally no reporter lasts in Syria for more than a couple of weeks. Either they are made to understand in no uncertain terms that their presence in not welcome, and leave the country, or, if reluctant to take the hint, they get thrown out by the authorities. Yet others keep slipping in to take their place. This story is just too important to be left uncovered. Yet, the perils should not be overlooked or underestimated. How does one find the right balance?

It was a chilling coincidence that in the same week of the death of these two reporters in Homs, the esteemed Frontline Club in London sent out a survey asking journalists’ view on the question of their own safety and the thorny issue of responsibility. If you are a freelance, please fill it out:

One of the questions in the survey is “Is there any story worth dying for”. As a journalist in the field my answer to this question may have varied, but as an editor for GRN my answer is a loud and echoing NO.

Most of us may agree that broadcasters and newspapers who use the work of freelancers owe them support and compensation if they get hurt while reporting, but legally and practically the answer might be very different. Do not go into a dangerous zone without appropriate insurance. Furthermore, do not go anywhere without insurance. GRN can help you purchase reasonably priced insurance. If we commission you to go somewhere were we are short of reporters and hungry for coverage we might even pay for your insurance, but we can’t do it for all the correspondents on our lists everywhere.

Safety advice in different places vary. In some places it is advised to not move around alone. In others, not to be out after dark. All journalists with whom we’ve discussed the subject recently mentioned they always tell somebody trustworthy where they are going. When relevant, get a body armour and a helmet. In places where journalists are tracked and followed, make sure your communication channels are secure. It is well worthwhile investing in software that scrambles your location and obfuscates it when you email or otherwise communicate using your computer.

A subject not addressed by the survey, but is acutely relevant especially in places like Syria, is the safety of your sources and fixers. A western journalist who gets arrested will, in the vast majority of cases, get released and deported. However the local people, exposed by searches on computers, notepads and mobile phones, may be subjected to prolonged arrest, torture, and death. Get rid of your computer files as soon as you can by emailing them and deleting them, and code as much of the information as possible.

The Facebook group The Vulture Club group is a useful place to hook up with other journalists on the ground, post information about your location, and seek help of all kinds. Do request to join it.

And please post your safety tips here. I know we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg here, so this is mostly an invitation for you to share your experiences and ideas for safety and security.

And be careful out there.

Today we’ve filmed the second GRN Chat. After January’s talk with Portia Walker, about her coverage of the Arab Spring and her experience of journalism as a woman and as a young person, this time we hosted at GRN’s headquarters in Hammersmith one of our veteran correspondents, Charles Aniagolu.

Charles was born in Scotland to Nigerian parents, and has been covering Africa, and mainly Nigeria, for years, for the BBC, ITN and CNN, until he set his own production company and started working as a freelance. He spends half his time in Nigeria, researching, reporting and filming, and the other half in England, engaging mainly in post production.

We discussed his perspective on Nigeria as a foreign yet non foreign journalist, the growing security risks in Nigeria, the growing chasm between the poor Muslim North and the affluent Christian South, and the government’s attempts to pacify the situation, not without landing an ear to separatist voices. We touched on the practices of the Nigerian media, the prevailing corruption, internet scams and Noliwood – the huge Nigerian film industry which is hardly known to Western viewers.

After only two interviews I already feel that the privilege of being able to run them under the GRN auspices this year is probably one of the best Christmas presents I received. Besides the pleasure of hanging out with out correspondents (who are interesting and lovely), I get to sneak a peak into the world of journalists who cover different places in the world – their professional dilemmas and the complicated politics and cultures in which they operate. Like most journalists, I often fantasise about all the places I would go and cover, if I could. After talking to Charles Aniagolu and Portia Walker I feel as if I got to spend some time in the Middle East and in Nigeria of the passing year, not as a tourist, but as a journalist.

I hope you’ll enjoy the new GRN chat as much as I do. I can’t wait for my promised tour of current Afghanistan via a chat with Carmen Gentile in Kabul next week (yes, we are getting greedy, we might have two interviews in the shortest month of the year).

Please let us know your thoughts, your participation is important to us and one of the main reasons that we are reaching out to our correspondents.

One of the major breakthroughs in the way GRN has been operating over the last two years has been the introduction of ‘online invisions’, namely, correspondents performing live on-camera broadcasts on webcam via Skype, Google Chat or other live-chat programmes. The financial advantage to our clients was evident immediately: it enables them to have a correspondent live on-camera, while saving the very high costs of renting a feedpoint. For the correspondent the advantage is not having to go to the feedpoint and doing the live report where he or she is (whether home or out on site), while getting paid the same fees. Keeping the rates high is enabled by the saving on the feedpoint for the client.

A few broadcasters were ahead in realising the potential of the online live invision two-ways. They realised that whatever they might miss in picture quality (which depends on location but is generally improving everywhere), they gain in the “real” feel that viewers have become used to in the age of the internet. Other clients were more reluctant, but they are gradually catching up.

Our operations director, Mais, while visiting clients in Canada and the US last week, heard from TV clients that they now, ideally, are interested only in online invisions, over phoners.

Many of our correspondents are internet savvy and are doing online invisions regularly, enjoying the more-than-double fees (compared to phoners), and the larger exposure. We would very much like to encourage all of our correspondents to do the same. Doing online invisions is quite simple, please take note of the basic ground rules, and let’s give it a go!

Equipment: You’ll need a computer, Tablet or Smartphone with a web camera and microphone (most devices have them built in).

Performance: Look presentable. Comb your hair if you have any, and wear a buttoned up shirt or a nice top. There’s no justification for looking as if you’ve just crawled out of a ditch unless you are in an actual war zone. If you are out and about on site and you have long hair, tie it back. Do not fidget, unless dodging a bullet, and do not wave your hands in front of your face. Look at the camera and speak clearly and slowly. And remember (it is strangely easy to forget): you have a camera, you can turn it to interesting things that are happening on site instead of just describing them, but make sure you tell your interviewer first that you are about to do so.

Backdrop: Television is a visual medium. Broadcasters like to be able to show that the correspondent on-air is present where the story is taking place. If you are on site, try to stand where unfolding events (demonstration, iconic site of the city you are in etc) is at your back. That said, try to avoid noisy spots where the background noise would make you inaudible. Obviously, if’s it dangerous, go somewhere safe. Safety first above everything else.

If you are at home (or hotel, flat where you are staying and so on), try not to set up against a blank wall. If you have some nice view from your window, the terrace or the roof, try to set up there. It does not necessarily need to be a tourists-postcard type of view, but it is likely to give a bit of the flavour of where you are. Even if it is night time, city lights are a better background than a wall.

We pay an additional fee to correspondents who can provide such “location” background.

Reporting: Speak slowly and clearly. Be attentive to the questions and to signs that you need to cut short. And as in any kind of reporting, the better researched you are, the better your hit will be. That said, take notice of things happening around you when on air and refer to them. Remember: the facts can be delivered to the audience in many different forms, but you are the only one who is there to connect them to the feel of the scene as it unfolds.

Let us know: If you are new to doing online invisions let us know once you are good-to-go. We can not let clients know that you are available for it unless we know that you are!

Need more help? Nobody knows technophobia better than yours truly. We are lucky enough to have in our headquarters a few people who can hold your hand through the process of setting up without taking the mickey out of you more than absolutely necessary (I did put it to the test!). Contact Matt Cooksey, our tech-wiz, on mc@grnlive.net, and he’ll arrange a live tutorial with you over the phone or on Skype. He can also provide some advice regarding equipment, software and so on, and he is also a really nice bloke.

Let’s get sampling: Over the last week, we started doing a daily online short interview with one or two of our correspondents every day. The piece goes onto our YouTube channel and our website and is sent to clients with the daily alert. This is a great marketing tool both for us and for the correspondents. The last weeks have shown a significant increase in bookings for the correspondents who featured on those sample online invisions. They are also a great way to try it out without the pressure of being live on-air. If you are covering one of the main stories of the day and want to give it a go, let us know and we’ll get you on the daily alert too!

Looking forward to seeing y’all on air!

Our series of GRN chats was launched this week, when we had an enjoyable and interesting conversation with Portia Walker at GRN headquarters in Hammersmith. Portia covered Yemen and Libya during the Arab Spring. On reflection she talks about the Middle East, journalism and women in war zones.We intend to try and have one monthly in-depth chat with one of our correspondents. Many thanks to Matthew Cooksey for filming and being so helpful in setting up.

A fascinating debate erupted this weekend between blogger Richard Silverstein and Journalist-blogger Dimi Reider, over a piece of news in the Israeli media saying Israel’s most advanced drone crashed in test flight

In his blog Tikun Olam, Silverstein, quoting an Israeli source inside the military, argued that the drone was in fact an Iranian drone launched by Hezbullah, and that the drone story is a fictitious version spread by Israel to avoid being committed into an to attack on Iran as a response. Silverstein takes the precaution of  regarding his own story as “likely” and attributing it to the unknown source, yet in his analysis he seems to take it pretty much on face value, and comments on the “Iranian thesis” as if it was a proven fact.

Some of Silvesrein’s readers on Facebook and Ha’aretz correspondent and editor of the prestigious +972 blog, Dimi Reider, challenged Silverstein’s story.

Reider argues, in essence, that relying on a single unnamed source for a story could give the Israeli government the pretext it awaits for attacking Iran. In this he implicitly joins an insinuated allegation, phrased in less uncertain terms by other commentators, that Silverstein might be used inadvertently by powers that be in Israel’s security services.

Over the last two years US based Silverstein had a few impressive exposures, many of which were corroborated and aired later by Israeli and international media. The biggest of them was probably the arrest of Anat Kam, a journalist and whistle blower who has now been trial for 9 years and is in prison for leaking 2000 military secret documents to journalist Uri Blau.

His reputation is beginning to precede him, but there is a big difference between breaking a story like the Kam affair, the details of which were known to all Israeli journalists whose hands were bound by military censorship and court orders, to breaking an exclusive story relying on the word of an insider. While insisting on his faith in his source and fending off accusations of being used, Silverstein makes a clear distinction between his role as a blogger and the role of a journalist. In response to GRN’s question he said “Dimi approaches this matter much more from the perspective of a traditional journalist than a blogger (though he is both). But it’s one thing to try to disprove my story and another to prove the IAF version. I’d like to see you authenticate or attempt to. Or to present a theory that is more credible than mine or theirs. Can you?”

When asked to qualify his view of the difference between the commitment of bloggers or journalists to the traditional codes of ethics in journalism Silverstein says: “I face several conditions Israeli bloggers and journalists don’t face. Some are helpful and some hinder my work. The fact that I am not subject to Israeli censorship or gag orders frees me to report stories no one in Israel can or will report. But not being in Israel is a drawback in that I can never meet my source face to face or carry on a direct conversation. Also, because of legal threats & vulnerabilities it’s important to maintain a wall between myself & my source (to protect him). So these are the constraints under which I work. I can’t for example go to Sdot Micha or the moshav where the alleged drone crash happened to check it out. I can’t go to my source and engage in careful discussion about all the parameters of the story. So if you were an editor, you likely could never publish any of my stories because they don’t offer the sort of journalistic verification that would be required for mainstream journalism. In a sense, much of this (the opportunities and constraints) is caused by Israel’s peculiarities as a national security state in which military intelligence is held under lock and key and parcelled out only to those who are favoured recipients such as approved journalists and the like. If Israel were more like the U.S. I would likely be a less valuable resource. All this by way of saying that journalists don’t have different standards of ethics than bloggers, but they sometimes have to act as their own editor and make judgements about standards of proof and evidence that are different than a blog editor might make.”

Silverstein goes on to explain how his role as a journalist sits with his interest as a peace activist: “unlike a newspaper, I view my blog as a source of both reporting and activism. Obviously, if I’m ever proven wrong (and I don’t believe that this has happened regarding my reporting of this story despite questions some may have about it) my political credibility diminishes. So it’s clearly in my interest to be accurate. But in the case of Iran Israel war, my overarching goal is to prevent one. So if my source offers a story that elucidates the danger of such conflict and I’m confident in his credibility, I will report it though I may not have the level of proof a mainstream media story would require.”

Silverstein challenged his critics to “prove the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) version” of the story. However, it is not necessary to believe the IDF story in order to question the extent to which Silverstein has proved (or not proved) his own story in this case.

Reider, too, is an activist as well as a journalist, but he does not see a difference between the codes of ethics he is committed to as a blogger and as an activist. “if anything, when I blog for +972 I use even higher standards, because I know that there’s no one to check my work or watch my back if I screw up”.

This concept of trust and reputation is one that is strong in the freelance news community too, we are only as good as our last story. It takes a long time to build up credibility, but it’s very easy to loose, very quickly.

So here at GRN we have to address these questions in the rare cases in which we bring bloggers onto our books as correspondents. We tend to prefer bloggers who are, or who were in the past, journalists, and in any case our vetting process involves verifying their commitment to a journalistic codes of ethics. The importance of the whistle-blowing blogger as a source has been beyond question for a long time, but our commitment to professional journalism binds all our correspondents.

These days the idea of sitting down at X o’clock to watch a show is quaint, rather like riding a horse to work…

We are entering a golden age of media, of entertainment, of news, of sport….on a screen in our homes, bedrooms, offices or on the go…

Choice, choice and more choice but let the scales fall from your eyes and realise the devise isn’t important, if you watch TV sitting up or lounging back with a one button remote control or 500 button complicated keyboard…it doesn’t matter…what will make money is programming…both amateur and very high end professionally produced…the field is totally open…

The golden age is about what we watch, read, listen to or interact with…it’s not about software, hardware or funky algorithms…this time round they are going to have to keep up with the consumer…

For example, the BBC News at Ten needs to be re-branded ‘Evening News’ or something, so I can watch it at 11pm anywhere….

Advertising

Why choose a channel to advertise with, choose a programme

Big ticket advertisers will bundle around programming that is on-demand and interactive, voting, chatting, commenting and reporting.

But smaller, niche advertisers don’t need TV channels, as we currently understand them, they can plug into specialist programming…if it only gets a dedicated audience of people who will buy the product, everybody wins…this is and I’m guessing here, the Google TV idea….at least it should be…

Sport will be a vague exception, events are less on demand, more live…but with time-shift and fast forwarding of ads, those paying have to be sharper to get the return on investment they need.

My children won’t watch TV like I used to, I don’t watch TV like I used to – everything I do now is on-demand.

Smart screens, delivering me what I would like to watch, at my convenience…

The BBC technology correspondent Rory-Cellan Jones recently investigated the concept of a marriage between the web and TV…but in my mind he’s well behind in his conclusions…what do you think? Click here to watch the short film.

The ‘Web’

If Google wants to remain relevant in the long term, it needs to start creating more than just software, algorithms or other technology thinly veiled in a cloth of creativity….they need to start owning and commissioning films, music, news, sport and more…

If Apple are really serious of continuing to play game changer; the real growth for iTunes is live music and being the label itself. They must start signing bands and offering a platform to streaming gigs, mastering them, recording them, all live, and selling them…or allowing the bands to distribute them for free…building up an audience… Lets face it, live music is the future, record labels crying over declining CD sales have lost it…years of under investment in real musicians must be over. Sticking with the simple option of preferring manufactured pop that cannot sustain themselves over 200 gigs a year, will see them go bust. Music that is simply based on single or album sales is over…live is back …

It has been said that Apple is founded in a Grateful Dead ethos, then remember how the Dead did music, by constantly doing live shows and allowing anybody to record and distribute the music for free…

Apple’s latest announcement about text books is a step in this direction – obviously it can be applied to any publishing…like it or not Apple…

The so called ‘Media companies’

If you don’t understand it, don’t touch it… this is an another example of a bad investment from News Corp, Read the Reuters story

They have a history of it…think MySpace…Here in the UK, they are sinking money into the so called Sky News app…which you get for free as a Sky subscriber, or I can buy for a middling number of pounds a month…quite why anybody would buy it is beyond me, the content is so thin it hurts, re-purposing material is not good enough any more… What’s funny is that they know it, the objective is not to make money, they tell me, it’s purely a ‘land grab’…because that is the extent of the News Crop digital strategy…

Then there is AOL and the Huffington Post – will this work? Probably not, as building a semi-professional content model with no investment in the raw material, i.e. the grass root contributor, is like a building without foundations and as we all know, they don’t last…

A blend between the two

Where will Facebook or Twitter be in this bright new age of independent professionals pushing their own destiny…it doesn’t really matter, they might survive, they might get swamped.

The future are organisations that are flexible, organisations that value the independent creative, support building an audience and more…

A new understanding of terminology

Blog – website, money making tool

Content – a programme, a show, a movie, a picture

FTP – Totally over

Platform – somewhere flat to rest your tablet

PR – a good pool of money to fund programming, take the money and deliver the product you want..the age of ‘mis-said’  in this game is over

TV – a screen, not a stand alone money making device…purely a tool

YouTube – world’s largest broadcaster

Please add to …lets grow this list…

GRN’s morning news alert, published on out website and emailed to our clients every day at 11GMT, is beginning to undergo an interesting face-lift. The idea is that each day we ask correspondents who cover the biggest news in the world, to spare us a few minutes of their time and record a short video interview with us, which we post on our YouTube channel and link to on our alert.

Today we had Rachel Beth Anderson talking about the anniversary of the Egyptian revolution from Cairo, which captured the imagination of millions in the world and inspired protests and revolts in many countries, some very far away from the Middle East.

Journalism is going through very speedy changes, and correspondents nowadays are challenged by demand to be a multi-talented one-person roving news-making unit. Gathering the news and writing it up is no longer enough and even print journalist can maximise their work capabilities and earning potential only if they can also take pictures, film and edit video, and get themselves on Skype for live on-camera Q&As.

And don’t forget the mobile phone that needs to always be charged, the laptop that needs to be properly encrypted in case it is confiscated by a strict border officer or raided by secret police, and the software that allows you to make your location unknown. A presenter, a cameraman, a sound engineer, and a bit of a James Bond seems to have entered the basic job description, and they are here to stay. Technology is there to meet those demands. In fact, technological developments have created these great expectations.

The younger globetrotting generation of young journalists seem to be savvy when it comes to technology no less than they are about content. Some of us, older or technologically-challenged hacks, are more apprehensive about catching up with the times, yet we are aware of the great potential of those developments and their huge advantages to news makers and news consumers alike.

At the same time the visual languages the viewers is used to is also changing. Broadcasters who were iffy about using Skype and similar software for live hits, are beginning to recognise its advantages. A quick correspondent with a mobile phone can often get the photo or the sound-bites that a large camera crew can’t, not to mention at lower cost.

At GRN we are trying to combine the advantages of using the tools available to almost anybody, while never compromising on the quality of the professional journalism of our correspondents. Our YouTube channel gives us a platform for display, audio or video and to provide a selling platform for our correspondents, while reporting the news.

Looking back at the short interviews we have posted over the last few days reveals a fascinating rainbow of news snippets: Ken McCoy from Hollywood, Tim Stackpool from Sydney, Alan Hall from Berlin, Shaun Walker from Moscow, to mention a few.

And our private secret treat is that we get to say hello in person to a few of our correspondents every single day and bring our own global community of journalists and broadcasters a little bit closer together.