Another good one today, but was again in the office all day which meant I didn’t see daylight at all – looking forward to reporting from court next week, which will at least afford me the couple of minutes walk each way there and back…
The operation seems to be getting slicker now and I’m still surprised at how calm things are in the newsroom most of the time. I was lucky enough to get a couple of bylines in news for stories I brought in from my patch over the weekend (they’ll be up on Capture Cardiff later, but I’ve got the small matter of Manchester City v Bolton to attend to first).
I’ve got a couple of other interesting things lined up this week but they’ll have to wait…and I promise there’ll be another travel post soon, I’m just debating whether to do Kathmandu, New York or Saint Petersburg next – suggestions welcome!
Another quick blog of more journalism-related thoughts having been out in my patch today. I was discussing with an excellent food blogger the other day how one of the main problems in newsgathering at a local level – when you’re working a patch, as I am at the moment – is making people realise that what they’re interested in or aggrieved about is news.
I’ve almost lost track of the number of people in the past week who have said to me “No, I don’t think there’s anything much interesting” and then followed it up by telling me something important. The challenge for hyperlocal blogs, then, in my limited experience in the sphere, is making people realise that their concerns about the minutaie of their daily life – why they were woken by sirens in the middle of the night or why they now have t0 pay to park in their own street – is the essence of local news.
Maybe local newspapers can undergo a renaissance if they really get into the grassroots of community journalism, although this would then create the difficulty of providing equal coverage to each area. I’m not sure it’s in any way a solution, but after a week of telling people that things they think I won’t care about are exactly the sort of things I’m interested in hearing then maybe it’s a step in the right direction.
I’ve neglected my blog a bit this week, which has been the unhappy collateral of an interesting and challenging first week of production days and newsgathering. My patch of Canton in Cardiff has been fairly quiet but I did manage to get a few things in print today; a car test/review, a feature on card fraud, 1,000 or so words of leader/comment and a few small news items too.
I’ll link to them all soon when they’re up on Capture Cardiff, which is really starting to take off now with more and more content coming in.
Keep reading - normal service will be resumed here shortly. I hope.
Having not long returned from the first production day for the newspaper diploma group here at CJS and, inspired by my colleague’s Josh Pettitt’s AudioBoo journal of his newsgathering experience, I thought I’d mark the day with a quick diary entry post to remind me of the day in the weeks to come…
I was Chief Sub-editor, which basically meant organising what would go where on the pages and then relaying that information to the sub-editing team who made the pages look snazzy.
The 7am start was surprisingly painless and the day didn’t feel long at all, although the few hours up to deadline at 4.30pm passed by in a bit of a blur. Still, we got the paper out on time - we’re talking in seconds – and it looked pretty good. Solid ground to build upon…
Some of the copy should soon be appearing on Capture Cardiff, a brand new hyperlocal news site for Cardiff which is just getting off the ground. It is the brainchild of Dan Bloom and is going to be run by us crazy newspaper students so keep an eye on it. I’m glad to say I’m part of it and I’ll soon be putting a Capture Cardiff page up on here where I’ll be linking to my content on the site.
Which is heavily dependent on me pulling in some stories for production days – roll on Friday!
There’s not really any easy way to put into words the experience of Delhi. It is the most demanding place I have ever been to; physically and emotionally it is incredibly draining. From the very moment you arrive, you are hassled and harangued by vendors, taxi drivers, beggars and interested bystanders.
I flew into Delhi and took a taxi from the airport (take a pre-paid one which you organise inside the terminal; I’d recommend going for the ‘luxury’ option after I made the mistake of being economical and then spending 45 minutes sweating in the back of a rusting tin can) to the Hotel Astoria in the Karol Bagh district of the city.
You soon learn in India that everything is exaggerated. Reading the site above promising the Hotel Astoria has ‘air conditioning, satellite TV, refrigerator, telephones with direct dial facility, 24 hour room service, and [its] own travel counter’ is completely laughable. The ‘air conditioning’ was provided by an erratic fan and slats in the windows. I won’t even begin to mention the ‘room service’…
What I would recommend, if you’re using Delhi as the starting point for a trip around India, is to wait until you arrive there to book a tour. It seems crazy but you can find a much better deal there and you have the option to set your own itinerary and have your own driver which, despite the bad experiences some people report, is a fantastic way to do it. I can highly recommend Abyss Tours; their customer service was brilliant and their staff were friendly, helpful and trustworthy.
The Red Fort in Old Delhi
Then it’s time to get out into the city. I’d allow at least half a day for the Old City and a full day for the New City. In the older part, the Red Fort is worth seeing but don’t go in with great expectations as it is actually very mundane and quite tired looking. If you’re heading on to Jaipur or Jodhpur then you could make do with just seeing the Red Fort from the outside and see the far more impressive forts in these other places.
The Jama Masjid
A short walk away is the stunning Jama Masjid, India’s biggest mosque. Like most places in the city, the people there exploit tourists as much as possible and you will frequently find yourself being expected to hand over more money, so be wary (especially if you’re a first time visitor). It is worth pointing out at this point that genuine and extreme poverty is rife across the city, and is something you should be as well prepared for as you can.
The mosque is worth at least an hour of your time. Make sure you climb right to the top of the minaret; it’s not for the faint-hearted and the health and safety is pretty sparse but the views are excellent.
View across Delhi from Jama Masjid
Round off Old Delhi with a visit to the Rajghat, the cremation site of Mahatma Gandhi. It is a simple and touching memorial and the serenity is out of keeping with the rest of the city, making it a very relaxing way to spend the early evening when you’re starting to get tired.
The Rajghat
Sticking with the theme of peace and quiet – a very rare commodity in Delhi – it can also be found in the gorgeous Lodi Garden, which is in New Delhi. The Garden is like a huge park and it’s easy to lose track of time as you stroll around enjoying the scenery and watching the animals scampering about.
The 'mini Taj' - Humayun's Tomb
Another place of relative calm is Humayun’s Tomb, which is registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was the inspiration for the Taj Mahal. The complex of buildings are all well-preserved and the vibe is much more relaxing than the cattle market feel of the Taj itself.
The Qutab Minar, another UNESCO World Heritage Site
Standing at 72.5m high, the Qutab Minar is the highest stone tower in all of India. The red sandstone gives it a chalky, earthy look and the history of the tower – built in the 13th century – is fascinating. Twice hit by lightning, it has undergone reconstruction throughout its past and is the only intact structure within the entire complex.
The Lotus Temple, New Delhi
By far the most visually impressive attraction in New Delhi, though, is the gorgeous Lotus Temple. It is a Baha’i house of worship which means it is open to people of all religious denominations for quiet contemplation or prayer, and it is a calming, beautiful place.
In a city like Delhi, where there is so much to contemplate, those qualities are hard to find.
I’ve just spent the last five minutes in a daze dreaming about various places I want to visit; my current top 10 (no particular order, and somewhat disparate) are below. I’d be interested in anything people that have visited have got to say about them and also in anywhere you would like to visit, so leave me a comment
This one is just going to be a quick laugh at my own expense really. As we already know, I can’t do yoga. Another thing I learnt in India, whilst in the pink city of Jaipur, is that my traditional Rajasthani dancing isn’t so great either.
Hope the back to the camera slightly disguises my lack of grace
I was out for a drink one night in one of the city’s less conventional nightspots when, after a couple of bottles of Kingfisher, I was finally persuaded that dancing in front of a restaurant full of fellow travellers was a great idea. In some ways, it wasn’t; my moves were more akin to that of the elephant I’d been sat on the back of earlier in the day than the Indian version of Wayne Sleep that I was embroiled in a dance-off with, and the combination of energetic dancing on top of a few pints and the early stages of amoebic dysentery didn’t make me feel altogether too brilliant.
Almost sat down - my kind of dancing
But it was wonderful fun, and reminded me of holidays when I was younger and I’d always been too embarrassed to get up and have a boogie with my Gran. Holidays are about letting go and trying something new – even if you do look like a prat!
When you’re travelling, you’ve often got plenty of time on your hands. Whether you’re waiting for a connecting flight or stuck on a train for six hours, a good book will always nullify the pain of the time spent hanging around. Below are my ‘top ten’ books that I’ve read whilst travelling; feel free to add some of your own in the comments below.
When pop superstar Michael Jacksondied of a cardiac arrest on June 25 2009, the news was broken not by an agency, a newspaper, or a rolling news channel, but by celebrity gossip website TMZ. Less than 20 minutes after Jackson was pronounced dead, the Los Angeles-based site published the first report that he had passed away.
It was immediately but cautiously taken up by 24-hour news channels on both sides of the Atlantic, who qualified their reports by citing TMZ as the only source of the information. The internet, meanwhile, was ablaze; TMZ and Twitter crashed due to the weight of traffic, and Google believed it was under attack due to the number of users searching for “Michael Jackson”.
So is this online explosion an example of what we know as ‘journalism’? TMZ calls itself an ‘entertainment news’ site yet, despite its reputation for being the first on many big celebrity gossip stories (it again led the pack recently with lurid revelations of Tiger Woods’s personal life), their ‘news’ is often treated with scepticism.
The site allegedly has hundreds of civilians on its payroll, particularly in the emergency services. This would go some way to explaining the unprecedented access to information they seem to have, not to mention the speed with which they break stories. The rise of user-generated content and so-called ‘citizen journalism’ means traditional journalists are no longer the first to uncover the big scoops.
Richard Tait, Director of the Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University, says this reflects a change which he has seen during his journalistic career. “When I started in journalism, a journalist was the first person at an event,” he said. “Journalists were the first to file. They’re not anymore.”
Ian Hargreaves, Director of Communications at the Foreign Office, says a more cavalier approach to telling the truth in journalism has coincided with an increasing infatuation with celebrity news. In his book Journalism: Truth or Dare? he writes: ‘In the same period that journalism has learnt to make light of the boundary between fact and fiction, it has also become increasingly absorbed by the entertainment and sales potential of celebrity, with significant consequences for the way that journalism is practised.’
But the expansion of citizen journalism and the increasing use of established media outlets to crowdsource through social networks, particularly Twitter, carries an inherent danger. The reliability of sources is one of the most important factors in responsible journalism, and is at the centre of the BBC’s ethos.
After Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the Andrew Gilligan affair, where a BBC journalist’s story on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was found to be false, the Neil Review Team produced a report called The BBC’s Journalism After Hutton. Its advice to staff when looking at the credibility of a source asks seven key questions: ‘What is their motive? Is the person in a position to have the information provided? Are they inflating the level of their knowledge? Has the person an axe to grind, or personal benefit to gain from the publication of the story? Do they have their own agenda? Has this source been reliable in the past? What level of verification and second sourcing is there?’
Yet it seems the number of potential sources and citizen journalists will only grow, and these questions will be asked increasingly often. The process is happening organically; as more stories are started at user level, so more people see the opportunity to become part of the newsgathering operation. Technology, coupled with widening access to data such as under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, means today everyone can be a journalist whether they are accredited as one or not. Those in the audience will only watch or read what they want, and if they cannot find it then they can uncover it for themselves: this can be seen through the growth of hyperlocal news blogs, like the Lichfield Blog, and collaborative investigation projects, such as Help Me Investigate.
If people will only stop to read what they are interested in, then the pressure is on journalists to produce reporting that is better than their competitors. Charles Reiss, Political Editor of the London Evening Standard from 1985 to 2005, says journalists have always been under this pressure, even before the digital age. “Reporters are storytellers in a marketplace, and what that means is that our story needs to be that little bit newer or that little bit more informative or that little bit more entertaining, otherwise the punters will move on to the next stall down the line.
“That I reckon has been true ever since the first word hit the printed page, if not before, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s print on a page or an old-fashioned movie camera or a tape recorder or the ’net; these are just the pipes down which we put our stuff.” Setting this at the level of the individual reporter is what shows that good journalism will not be a casualty of the digital revolution in the media; it will, if anything, be enhanced by it.
Users can now compartmentalise their consumption of news because they no longer have to buy a complete package from one outlet. Ian Hargreaves says that the notion of a ‘newspaper industry’ is a myth. “The people whose business is newspapers need to understand that they’re not in the business of newspapers; they’re in the business of selling news, comment, and other information that people want or need to have,” he says.
This means that what Hargreaves calls the “commodity stuff” will be done by fewer journalists as different news organisations will no longer employ staff to do identical jobs. As such, only the best journalism will survive the digital revolution. Those who are entrepreneurial and can add value to their skillsets will be the journalists of the future because they will be the ones who the public will rely on; they will be the trusted vendors in the marketplace.
But they will do so whilst working alongside – not above – their audience. As Richard Tait describes, consumers are now also contributors. “The future of journalism has to be the journalism of verification; of accuracy and authenticity. It has to be a journalism of compliance; you need to comply with the law and with the regulations that affect your particular branch of the profession. You have to respect and take account of the feedback you’re going to get from citizen consumers and contributors; they’re going to send you video, they’re going to send you stories.”
But the ‘journalism of the future’ may still be some way off. Traditional media outlets may be battling to remain in control, but if they can harness the contributions and listen to what their audiences want then it may be some time before the death knell sounds for media as we know it today.
As Peter Preston, a former Editor and Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian and now a media columnist for The Observer, says: “The future is misty and I think in some ways utterly miasmic, but the thought that you are moving from newsprint and newspapers and words on paper directly and in a straight line towards a new world where news is all online has taken a whole series of bashes and course directions over the last two or three years.”
I’ve already mentioned one of Pokhara’s main attractions in my inaugral post when I wrote about paragliding, so instead I’ll focus on what there is to do and see in Nepal’s second city and, more importantly perhaps, what there is to eat. After three weeks of living as a vegetarian in India, I couldn’t believe my luck when I got to Pokhara and every restaurant served steaks at dinner time and a full English (of sorts) in the morning.
Breakfast in Billy Bunter's restaurant - manna from heaven
Make sure you get yourself stuck into some Nepalese momos (I’d recommend steamed beef ones) and have a roast beef sandwich in Monsoon Bar, and don’t miss the steaks (plural is deliberate – you get at least two) in Everest Steak House. Breaksfasts in Love Shack are worth trying – the bacon sandwiches are tasty, though don’t bother with the sausages.
The best restaurant in Pokhara has to be Moondance; the steaks are gorgeous (though they’ll serve them on a sizzler and burn your vegetables and chips no matter how many times you ask them not to), and the chocolate brownies are out of this world. Get a seat upstairs, play pool – for free – for as long as you like, have a few beers and look out over the beautiful Phewa Tal and you will be very happy indeed.
The gorgeous waters of Phewa Tal, set beneath the Annapurna mountain range
You can hire boats to go out on the lake – depending on the weather and how energetic you’re feeling you can either be at the helm yourself or pay a little extra and travel in style with a boatman or woman ferrying you around. I did the latter (unsurprisingly, I’d just eaten) for an hour and it was great. You can stop at a temple in the middle of the lake too, although there’s not quite as much to see there as is made out. There’s also a highly entertaining public toilet sign by the boat station, which informs you in two-foot high lettering: ‘Latrine Rs 3, Piss Rs 2′ (Rs being rupees, the currency of Nepal).
Temple on the small island in the middle of Phewa Tal
There are hundreds of small arts and crafts shops selling beautiful handicrafts and carvings, and you can easily spend at least a whole afternoon wandering around them buying gifts and souvenirs. There are plenty of travel agents too, so if you’re planning a visit to Chitwan National Park, Kathmandu, Tibet, Bhutan or India then spend some time strolling between them to get the best price. They also do a lot of offers on extreme sports, tea treks and transport, and you can make fantastic savings if you block book with them.
View over Pokhara from Sarangkot
Whether you want to paraglide or not, it is worth heading up to Sarangkot just for the views of the mountains and the lake. The city is in a valley so both the place itself and all of the surrounding areas afford beautiful views. Head up to the World Peace Pagoda – on foot if you’re brave/energetic - to see a beautiful Buddhist stupa with four different statues of the various incarnations of Buddha.
One of the statues of the Buddha at the World Peace Pagoda
While you’re out of the city you can make a day of it and visit the nearby Devi Falls and Gupteshwor Mahadev cave. The dramatic waterfall is said to be named after a Swiss tourist who drowned there whilst swimming, while the cave contains a massive stalagmite worshipped by Hindus as the ‘lingam‘ of the God Shiva.
Devi Falls
Round off your day with a visit to the Tibetan settlement at Tashi-Ling, where you can take a relaxing walk through the streets and chat to the people. By that stage, you’ll be ready to head back to Pokhara – the only question left is which restaurant to head for…
