5 days at the Guardian

Guardian morning editorial

Work experience is often code for ‘tea boy’ – the glamor-less work horses of offices up and down the UK. Although I may not have made much tea in the last week, I do feel like the Guardian have put me to good use and more than that – I have acquired much that I can take away with me (including a few Guardian pencils – made from ‘one recycled plastic cup’ don’t you know)

A wide range of tasks, including some standard data entry fare, were preceded by being thrust into the ‘10 o’clock’ upon my arrival on Monday morning. This is the first editorial of the day (first i hear you cry, we only have one a week at Redbrick) Anyone may attend, however it is focused around the editors of the main components of G1 (the main paper) G2, CiF (comment is free) and Sports. All are welcome to contribute anything they believe relevant or pertinent to the day, I of course stayed quiet.

I have also been lucky enough to attend the ‘12 o’clock’ a more exclusive and concentrated affair where serious decisions about content and page allocations start to get made. Pictures have also started arriving by this point, so everyone gets a chance to see what’s coming in to visually backup any copy being written. There is a great atmosphere at both of these meetings where editors contribute additional knowledge to other stories and input from anybody appears to be valued.

I have been involved in all sorts, from updating Swine flu data to helping prepare for the double page spread of ‘Disappeared in Iran‘ last Thursday. I also helped compile research for an interactive on the US offensive in Afghanistan. (See here) All of which have been interesting projects to be involved in.

However it is what I will bring away from the week (pencils aside) that I am most excited about, – the power of data and collaboration, the little things that enhance a readers experience of the paper or an article and what we can do to develop a relationship with our readers.

Small things like providing a picture of the writer have a surprising impact on peoples interaction with the paper, this is something we can do easily on the website – we need to allow the students of Birmingham to build a relationship with their paper- to give them ownership.

We also need to provide more basic information, it is dangerous to assume that readers know everything we know about a topic, never underestimate what knowledge someone might have missed before that will affect their understanding of an article. Small graphics / tables and pull out quotes can be used to great affect to explain / expand on concepts.

Simon Rogers who has been kind enough to provide me with this experience has also been running a project at the Guardian called the ‘Data Blog‘ – he is providing all the data that informs a lot of the articles and graphics in the paper as open source spreadsheets using google docs – encouraging people to take the data and ‘mash it up’ – finding new ways to present and use it.

I think that this is something that student media should get on top of – there is a variety of data, from local crime to university finances that can be examined and then put to greater use. How interesting would it be to map the crime statistics for Selly Oak throughout the year and provide an interactive map for students. It could be used by students deciding where to live in the coming year and by local residents to plan safe routes home.

I have been shouting about communication for a long time now, I know it is the key to many things in life (yes relationships included), so the sooner we crack this the happier I think we will be. On this note I think there is room for better communication within Redbrick – the Guardian has completely reworked its office layout to allow for greater coherence between different sections of the paper. There is little opportunity to ‘rework’ the Redbrick office, we could move some posters around. However we can and will improve our own communication and this will reflect each week on a Friday.

I have watched the Guardian responding to feedback that they receive throughout the day and making small changes and updates to enhance user experience on their website, this is a good way to build loyalty into readers because they feel listened to – which of course, they are. All of this is part and parcel of having a clear and well defined communication strategy. Something the team is in the process of developing for Redbrick.

We also have many avenues of unexplored potential for Redbrick because our audience is so clearly defined – hyper-local and students based, we can work at being more relevant, more detailed. We should have a small concentrated area to focus on and know it inside out. We should have writers that have relationships with students who work in the local area, with students that work for the university so that we are as connected as possible.

Of course there are challenges for Redbrick, as there are for all student media and I will be writing about these in an upcoming post, as usual all comments and participation is welcome. Find us @redbrickpaper or me @petren

(Note: i have stopped linking to the Redbrick website because it is being redeveloped at the moment, however it can be found here)

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Tags: communication, data, debate, discussion, Guardian, journalism, learn, newspaper, Redbrick, student media, work experience

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 6:31 am and is filed under Analysis, Comment, Redbrick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.