Direct input 21st century style

[PJ White]

I know nothing about modern journalistic practice. Can someone who does tell me if this sounds odd to them? It's from Glenn Greenwald's book on Snowden, No Place to Hide. He's describing the arrangement he had when he was a Guardian journalist:

"My agreement with the Guardian was that I had full editorial independence, which meant that nobody could edit or even review my articles before they ran. I wrote my pieces, and then published them directly to the Internet myself. The only exceptions to this arrangement were that I would alert them if my writing could have legal consequences for the newspaper or posed an unusual journalistic quandary."

PJ

[Louise Bolotin]

I find that hard to believe. At the very least they would have been legalled by the Guardian's lawyers. Especially because they had MI5 on their backs...

Louise Bolotin
Tel 07708 634135
Twitter: @louisebolotin
http://louisebolotin.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/louisebolotin
http://plaintext.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/pages/LouiseBolotin/196239043752185

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[Nick Ryan]

I guess GG was “the talent”: they had to woo him from Salon (?) I think it was; then he buggered off anyway to The Intercept (bankrolled by one of the eBay founders) and spends half his live in Brazil anyway …

Whether it was sensible is another matter! ;)

[PJ White]

On 06/03/2015 16:10, Nick Ryan wrote:

I guess GG was “the talent”: they had to woo him from Salon (?) I think it was; then he buggered off anyway to The Intercept (bankrolled by one of the eBay founders) and spends half his live in Brazil anyway …

Whether it was sensible is another matter! ;)

Well yeah. Especially as I don't think his background was journalism. He was a lawyer though, so maybe Louise would be comforted by that. To be fair, this was before the Snowden stuff broke.

PJ

[Louise Bolotin]

But a US lawyer. Anything of his the Guardian published in the UK edition must have been legalled, unless Greenwald had devoured McNae's prior to filing...

Louise Bolotin
Tel 07708 634135
Twitter: @louisebolotin
http://louisebolotin.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/louisebolotin
http://plaintext.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/pages/LouiseBolotin/196239043752185

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[PJ White]

On 06/03/2015 16:31, Louise Bolotin wrote:

But a US lawyer. Anything of his the Guardian published in the UK edition must have been legalled, unless Greenwald had devoured McNae's prior to filing...

What are you saying? That everything that appears on www.theguardian.com/uk is legalled as a matter of course? I really am out of touch.

PJ

[Louise Bolotin]

NO, of course not. But given that Greenwald does investigative stuff, I'd expect it to be checked over before publication. It's not Guardian Life and Style, after all...

Louise Bolotin
Tel 07708 634135
Twitter: @louisebolotin
http://louisebolotin.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/louisebolotin
http://plaintext.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/pages/LouiseBolotin/196239043752185

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[PJ White]

On 06/03/2015 16:41, Louise Bolotin wrote:

NO, of course not. But given that Greenwald does investigative stuff, I'd expect it to be checked over before publication. It's not Guardian Life and Style, after all...

Yeah. Thinking about it, he is talking about his relationship with Guardian US. And he does say that there was arrangement for prepublication checks:

"The only exceptions to this arrangement were that I would alert them if my writing could have legal consequences for the newspaper or posed an unusual journalistic quandary. That had happened very few times in the previous nine months, only once or twice, which meant that I had had very little interaction with the Guardian editors."

Even with this provision, it strikes me as extremely light oversight. I wonder if the Guardian eds would describe the arrangement in the same way.

PJ

[Charles Arthur]

Can happen, though it’s unusual for someone who’s effectively outside the organisation to be able to do it.
As he says, if it had to be legalled or posed a “quandary” then he’d call head office. And all the stuff around the Snowden leaks would have fallen deep into the first category, and Greenwald was aware of that.

His older columns (pre-Snowden) wouldn’t have benefited much from subbing tbh. I don’t know if he wrote the headlines and other body elements eg standfirst - again, he might have done, it’s not hard.

best
Charles

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/charlesarthur
The Overspill:
http://theoverspill.wordpress.com/
More:
http://www.charlesarthur.com/

[PJ White]

On 06/03/2015 16:51, Charles Arthur wrote:
> Can happen, though it’s unusual for someone who’s effectively outside the organisation to be able to do it.
> As he says, if it had to be legalled or posed a “quandary” then he’d call head office. And all the stuff around the Snowden leaks would have fallen deep into the first category, and Greenwald was aware of that.
>
> His older columns (pre-Snowden) wouldn’t have benefited much from subbing tbh. I don’t know if he wrote the headlines and other body elements eg standfirst - again, he might have done, it’s not hard.
>

"It's not hard." That's the most deeply shocking thing I've read all
week. Are you one of those troll-y people I hear so much about?

PJ

[Charles Arthur]

The stories that Greenwald would have done himself (if he’s being right about this) would be from May 2013 backwards
so
http://www.theguardian.com/profile/glenn-greenwald?page=3 and onwards (increasing page count)

Decide for yourself what you think of the headlines..
It could be that the US office was sent the copy in the CMS and then put the headlines and furniture on. I really don’t know.

[Nick Ryan]

How’s life in the freelance lane, Charles: all good I hope?

[PJ White]

On 06/03/2015 16:59, Charles Arthur wrote:
> The stories that Greenwald would have done himself (if he’s being right about this) would be from May 2013 backwards
> so
> http://www.theguardian.com/profile/glenn-greenwald?page=3 and onwards (increasing page count)
>
> Decide for yourself what you think of the headlines..
>

Ok, you win. They're not hard to write. My favourite standfirst:

"The standard Beltway excuse to justify bad acts fails to explain the
radically overbroad 2001 AUMF "

PJ

[Charles Arthur]

yup, there you are. Headlines and furniture weren’t his strong suit. But for controversy, I’d still say that a competent writer in the modern age should be able to do their own headlines and standfirsts, with some advice from SEO people about what works best. And subbing is essential for print, not so much for online-only throwaway stuff - which to me a lot of things seem to be these days. I’m amazed how bad so many tech sites are.



freelancing - well, being a stringer really because I have a contract to do a certain amount for the Gdn, but other stuff is happening (speeches, moderation, that sort of thing), so going fine for me. YMMV of course.

[Marc Beishon]

On Friday, March 6, 2015 at 5:04:25 PM UTC, PJ White wrote:

"The standard Beltway excuse to justify bad acts fails to explain the
radically overbroad 2001 AUMF "

I think it's safe to say he wrote that himself.

With a growing volume of online stuff and a dwindling band of subs I expect trusted contributors will get to post their own copy, and maybe already are. 

M.

[Charles Arthur]

> On 6 Mar 2015, at 17:45, Marc Beishon <ma...@compuserve.com> wrote:
>
> I expect trusted contributors will get to post their own copy, and maybe already are.

Been the case at the Guardian for quite some time for online-only.

[Chris Wheal]

Late to this, but I'd say it was totally normal now. My contract with AOL from five years ago meant I indemnified AOL against any legal action over anything I published (headline, photo - including copyright - you name it).

These days nearly everywhere you write your own story, headline and standfirst, SEO keywords, possibly a second, third or fourth headline for SEO or RSS or Facebook etc. you add a photo and caption it and write an alt attribute description for visually impaired users. You put in correctly formatted sub-headings (on AOL that means writing the HTML code). You embed a video - AOL target of 90% stories having a video now. You categorise and tag and add links. And you publish with nobody else reading it.

Chris Wheal
+447831268261
Sent from my iPhone

[Scott Colvey]

And all for £5/post.
--
Sent from my my mobile. Please excuse brevity/typos.

[Kris Sangani]

I've seen indemnity clauses which are similar to this. Specialist media lawyers I've spoken to over the years say they are pretty much unenforceable - which is why complainants are always going to go after those with the deepest pockets (the publishers) who are are going to do their damnedest to stop their contributors from considering any settlement or liability.

Sent from my iPad

[Simone Castello]

Yes, sounds right to me. With citizen's journalism rife, the internet is like the Far West. Now that I write subjective copy (blog posts and articles for a client) it's all down to me, I had clients who asked me to upload stuff too. However I charge extra for the keywords. 

Back to journalism, from what I hear through subsuk, which soon will be the forum for endangered journos and the protected species of subeditors, standards are slipping down alongside the daily rates. I doubt there is much fact-checking going on. When I was on 'fluffy monthly magazines' they had a lawyer 'on tap' so a sub could fax (old days) then email copy to him if they thought it was a bit controversial. It shocks me to see that some newspapers are skating on thin legal ice nowadays.

Simone Castello

http://www.simonecastello.co.uk/

@simonecas

http://www.linkedin.com/in/simonecastellodigitalstrategy

http://howtoseouk.blogspot.co.uk/

http://fromrattopositiveparent.blogspot.co.uk/

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From: pjwhi...@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 15:51:23 +0000
To: fleet...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [FleetStreet] Direct input 21st century style

I know nothing about modern journalistic practice. Can someone who does tell me if this sounds odd to them? It's from Glenn Greenwald's book on Snowden, No Place to Hide. He's describing the arrangement he had when he was a Guardian journalist:

"My agreement with the Guardian was that I had full editorial independence, which meant that nobody could edit or even review my articles before they ran. I wrote my pieces, and then published them directly to the Internet myself. The only exceptions to this arrangement were that I would alert them if my writing could have legal consequences for the newspaper or posed an unusual journalistic quandary."

PJ