We will of course link to the coverage and you should be able to see it in the Guardian – it gives a bit of low down on how ‘Hacks’ came to be. We are also hoping the post we publish tomorrow will generate some great discussion on the site.

If you are looking for more information about me, the Intern – then please see my about me page

Student media is an interesting world; our problems are very different to that of a regional or a daily.

Whilst we often worry less about making money (most only need to break even on printing costs) we can struggle to get the professional recognition from institutions needed to do our job. Often it can be the papers own university that doesn’t give it the time of day, sometimes the Police or the local council.

Yet student media groups throughout the country do not do themselves any favours; we do not work together on national issues, we do not have a network of contacts throughout the UK to help source local photos and comment and we do not stand up and fight for each other.

My old paper Redbrick has had issues in the past, as I am sure other publications have and will continue to do so long into the future. This year the Leeds Student had a standoff with its Union over the content of an article and went through an arduous campaign to get the issue reinstated.

Although there was a lot of vocal support on Facebook and some behind the scenes emails there was no mass outcry by other student publications, no editorials in support of the Leeds Student’s position.

There is little to no camaraderie from uni to uni, yet put the editors of these publications in one room and very quickly we all start moaning about the same problems and frustrations. We should be tackling these problems and issues nationally, not publication-by-publication, uni by uni.

Student media can be a very powerful platform and I have seen it influence change at a university level. Imagine – if coordinated (when appropriate) how powerful it could be at articulating the student view on a national level. There is protection in numbers and student media should do more for each other.

But more than that; the reliance on press releases and other material produced by those with an agenda is staggering – I had a policy of trashing most if not all press releases that arrived in the Redbrick inbox – I was incredulous to the point that persistent PR contact just got spammed. I could not for the life of me understand why we would use this substandard self-serving copy when we had reporters to go out, find stories and then write them up.

I was careful to maintain mutually beneficial relationships and of course sections like Film and Music relied heavily on industry contacts for interviews, CDs and screenings – however there was a direct benefit to the students reading the paper (better content – previews etc..) so I could see the point in growing such relationships.

I do of course realise that Redbrick did not need to turn a profit and that our reporters are all voluntary, so the dynamics of our content production was very different to that off a local or regional, but you do wonder what has happened to the integrity and principles that I am sure most young journos started out with – according to Davies it just gets ground away by news desks and editors.

It makes me feel better that we ignored all the PR that came our way, concentrating on developing our reporters and finding and confirming our own stories. It also makes me wonder about the terrible relationship between most student papers and their local and regional papers. Enthusiastic and hardworking student journos could be helping to contribute real stories and actual reporting to their locals – instead they just tend to be ignored.

I hope I never have to produce ‘churnalism’ – but I am sure I will in due course.

Now that is not strictly true, a couple of weeks work experience here and an interview or two there (fingers crossed) but nothing concrete or confirmed. A large part of that is I am not quite sure what I want to do. I know my passion lies in journalism – my undying love for Redbrick and the experiences I had with the paper have taught me that. Yet I am not sure where within journalism, especially in this world of uncertainty within the media industry.

However, I see the intense fluctuations within journalism and the problems born of a collapsing business model coupled with a recession as opportunity. Humans are never more resourceful and inventive than when the chips are down. Creating something clever, special and truly entrepreneurial requires inventiveness – driven by lack of resources and an industry full of naysayers. I want to be a part of this new journalism. We pushed the boundaries of student journalism, community building and engagement and student access to information at Redbrick in this last year, inspired by people like Nick Booth and organisations as varied as Help Me Investigate through to the Guardian.

These ideals and ideas can only be grown and expanded upon.

I have friends taking post grads in journalism, but this is not a path that has attracted me. I think that if I had the money for a postgrad I would look to train myself in the skills I think I need; I have always loved photography – I would take a course to improve my final product. I would learn CSS3 and buy the equipment I need to produce rich and varied multimedia content. I want to be a complete story-teller and each time I want to tell a story in a way it has never been told before and indeed, in a way that I never have told a story before.

Yet the project I want to do most in the world is ambiguous and undefined. I have walked away from Redbrick with friends for life, but even more than that, people I trust to work with. I trust their work ethic, their inventiveness and their intuition. The time is ripe for something new and I am aware of some great projects both in the States and here in the UK, but I still think there is plenty of space for new ideas. We just don’t have one yet.

This doesn’t bother me though, ideas will come and many will fail, but I am confident that what has been christened #projectlondon for lack of a better name has ‘legs’, it just needs a body and some brains. In the meantime I will keep looking to expand on my experience within the industry and engage in the conversations that are taking place.

When attending last year I had been elected as Redbrick editor only days before and as such I had a platform with which I could experiment. This time around I have nowhere to try-out the ideas and possibilities that have come out of the discussions I had on Friday

The highlights of the day were the opening and closing keynote speakers (Simon Waldman and Stewart Kilpatrick) and the breakout discussion on community management that I took part in.

A variety of problems were put forward in the discussion, everything from a lack of conversation through to fighting and trolls in comment sections. I do not think there is any need to detail the problems, they are after all fairly common place among all sites, however the ‘solutions’ were varied and interesting.

• Involve your ‘readers’ (audience) in the process of writing; the problem with more traditional pieces of journalism is they present a closed and completed argument. We should look to involve people from the beginning – Adam Tinworth suggested that the process was more important than the result.
• Join in with the discussion where it is taking place – if people are commenting on Facebook, or a related forum go to them. Remember that you are not trying to control the conversation, merely start and facilitate it.
• Invest in relationships: avatars are important they allow your audience to build a relationship with writers and with other potential commentators – these relationships are key, they can offer tips, verify content and give insight to writers.
• Add value to engagement: reward individuals for writing good comments – suggestions included Four Square style badges, ‘titles’ and responsibility, such as light moderation duties.

So whats next…?

Jeecamp is about how to move forward and as ever there is no one right answer, lots of people are trying and some are taking baby steps forwards and others are learning hard lessons about trying to be a journalist and a businessman simultaneously.

Simon Waldman talked about ‘Creative Disruption‘ and how businesses either learn to re-imagine themselves in the light of significant change or fail and disappear.

Stewart Kilpatrick talked about his business the Caledonian Mercury – Scotland’s first online only newspaper. He gave us an insight to the structure of the journalism side of the venture as well as some details on the business model – which is based on a revenue sharing concept.

The keynotes are linked to above, so I am keen not to repeat them; but I will write about what I took away from them. There was an overwhelming positivity from the day, that ‘now’ was the time for innovation and taking risks. There also seemed to be a consensus that journalists and journalism would exist in the future, but that ‘newspapers’ would been a completely different manifestation of their current selves.

As someone who is looking for a project (and an adventure) the talks set out some great rules going forward and provided oodles of inspiration.

True innovation is about problem solving, good solutions are elegant, but simple – Simon used the story of Apollo 13 to illustrate this point; talking about how the Houston based support team had to build a Carbon Dioxide filter from what the astronauts had in the ship. It is a fantastic way to conceptualise the basics of problem solving and to me it suggests infinite possibilities for the future – myself and my friends, those of us stupid enough to want to take on a challenge are not quite sure what direction we are moving in yet, but I think we have a better idea of how to start moving in it.

Stewart finished with this:

there’s never been a better time to be a journalist… And there’s never been a worse time to get a job as one.

I think it is time to stop talking about the future of Journalism and to start doing something about it.

As I have mentioned before I have lost all the posts I wrote about my plans and hopes for Redbrick this year, so all I can do is talk you through what we have achieved and where we think we can go in the future.

I see a lot of potential in the UK’s student media scene, I think it is woefully underdeveloped and many universities and their media groups should have better links with each other and better links with the industry. The student media scene is a great place for experimentation because the business model is different. It is an environment where risk should be encouraged and entrepreneurship supported.

Social media is the buzz topic at the moment, but it is the concepts that surround it that matter; relationships, community engagement and conversations – the interactions that publications have with their audience.

At Redbrick we have introduced a new website and a new approach to student news, we have diversified our multimedia offerings and we have brought student focused investigative journalism back into the core of our output.

This has paid dividends with fantastic traffic on the website allowing us to generate income through advertising and making sure we are speaking up for students when they need it the most.

As a student paper we will always be limited by our resources, our most precious being time (no one at Redbrick is full-time – although some of us like to pretend we are) and to this end certain aspects of our content will suffer. We have been weak on spelling this year, but we have improved the consistency within the paper, little tweaks that we believe improve the readability of the physical version.

However our big experiments this year have been online:

1. We have introduced a live blogging platform using Cover it live – this has allowed us to provide live coverage from a range of events. We have covered the big sporting fixtures, the Guild elections results and of course the final leaders debate that was hosted on campus.
2. We have introduced Audioboo and with this tool we have been able to give small updates on projects, off the cuff interviews and allowing students another means to connect with the content we produce.
3. Similarly, sections have also started podcasting, providing more analysis of issues that ran out of space in the paper and allowing the personalities of our editors and writers to come across to our audience.
4. We have a live coverage kit in the office that consists of a netbook, 3g dongle, camera, eye-fi card, power monkeys, dictaphone and other accessories which allows for instant setup when events take place and means we can provide up to the minute coverage of whatever we need.
5. We have introduced an iPhone app – it is a little basic (unlike The Student’s) – but they have a developer and we do not. Following soon will Android and Blackberry versions – we are looking to give students as many ways as possible to engage and interact with Redbrick.
6. We started the Selly Oak Crime Map – in partnership with the local police, providing students with relevant crime information about their local area and we will be developing the accompanying crime prevention information over the summer.
7. We have been using twitter, Facebook and other social media services to serve our content directly to users, so they do not always have to go looking for it.
8. Our Guild election coverage was the best we had ever produced with Audioboos of the candidates, a map showing where they have been – linked with photos showing what they are up to. A live blog that was pulling in tweets and commenting on the events taking place around campus and a continuous slide show of all the pictures from the two weeks of campaigning.

We have a couple more surprises before the academic year is out and you will be able to see those soon.

However even with all these experiments and services we know there is one area we haven’t had the success we were hoping for – our community. There are 28,000 students at Birmingham and whilst we have decent website traffic for our first year, it is not what we know it could be.

We also do not get as much discussion and debate on the site, via Facebook or on Twitter as we would like, so the aim for next year is to develop a real sense of community around Redbrick, with engaged students that participate in debate. It is a slow process – especially because of the nature of student media – we build good momentum and then we hit a four-week holiday so there are challenges to overcome, but there is no reason this cannot be achieved.

As I have said before, there is so much potential within the world of student media, students just need to continue grabbing opportunities by the horns and get stuck in.

No risk, no adventure.

People such as Nick Booth, Joanna Geary and Christian Payne took the time to speak to me and my colleague Pete Blakemore, they were happy to pass on advice and have been happy to answer a tweet or email asking for help in the last year as well.

Unfortunately this blog has lost all the observations I made post Jeecamp last year, so I will do my best to summarise them now:

• I came away thinking the future was about engaging our readers better, Christian and Joanna suggested we think of them as ‘participators’ or ‘contributors’ rather than readers, which suggests a one-way relationship.

• I knew we needed to be introducing projects that were of value to our ‘readers’ as well as good journalism, which is where ideas such as the Selly Oak Crime Map originated.

• We wanted to build a community around Redbrick using social media, getting students involved in the process of analysis and comment after the fact.

• I thought we needed to be experimenting with all the mediums available to us through the web. There was no reason we shouldn’t be live blogging sports games and tweeting and interviewing using Audioboo.

So, what does Jeecamp hold for me this year? – I am a third year, so I am graduating; I will no longer be involved in Redbrick so I will not have as direct an output to test out ideas. However I am sure that Jeecamp will show me a new way of thinking about old problems, it will offer the opportunity to connect with individuals who are trying to navigate their way through the murky world of journalism and I am sure it will leave me just as excited about the potential for the future as it did last year.

I don’t know what I will be doing in 6 months time; I do know I would like it to be a project of my own. I think journalism is in such a state of flux at the moment that it is time for it to redefined, (as some people are doing) I want to be helping to shape the future of journalism, not training myself in the ways of the past.

When saying this to a friend the other day, she asked me what I thought that future is, I said:

• The future is niche, specialist content, it is local and it is data driven.
• It is about conversations and discussion and debate with your audience.
• It is about empowering people with data and knowledge.
• It is about collaboration and sharing.

These are the components I think will be at the core of what is to come and I don’t just want to be along for the ride.

(I will be looking at what we achieved at Redbrick this year in a different post)