The DOBlog

The PaperRound over at Tuppenceworth has stirred up a hornet’s nest of phlegm and brimstone from at least two sources - the Indo article by Niall Byrne that I mentioned previously and a mysterious comment from ‘Soontobe’ on the Tuppenceworth Blog.

The team over at Tupp’worth may take issue with my view that the Paper Round study was a valiant first attempt at to measure how closely the Irish newspaper industry meets the expectation that papers contain news and as such is a form of Information Quality Audit of the Irish print media. However, if we consider the Paper round in that light, the responses, particularly the comment from ’soontobe’ show a significant disconnect in the mindset of Irish print journalism from core principles of quality.

The basic gist of the responses seems to be along the lines of ‘how dare bloggers criticise journos because bloggers don’t know anything, don’t have real lives and aren’t skilled enough to write for print media‘. We’ll ignore the fact that I know a of number of bloggers who write or have written for print media - Karlin Lillington anyone?

I will, however, pay attention to what this type of response means.

1. A study was done by a set of information consumers who had, I assume, paid for their newspapers and hadn’t stolen them and were therefore customers of the Irish print media houses.
2. This study (admittedly unscientific in its rigour but better than nothing) showed a very mixed bag of results across the papers examined.
3. These findings were published (along with the methodology)

In a Quality management context, what has happened here is that a group of customers have identified that their expectation of the product purchased is not being met and have produced some data to support their opinion.

Quality management advises (or rather mandates) that the focus of all processes and quality measures should be the consumer of your goods or information. Leading companies such as Toyota take the view that a customer complaint is an opportunity to improve their product. Where a customer or group of customers comes to them with actual DATA to backup the frequency or volume of defect, it is the equivalent of Christmas in a Quality manager’s world.

So, where sit the journos or the ‘journo-aligned’? Have they said “gee, thanks for doing this, now we have something to throw back at our editor when they insist on doing a half-page black and white piece on Claire Byrne’s orange dress”? ehhh…no. Have they said “good grief, what has happened to us? When we were in journo-school we wanted to be Woodward or Bernstein, or at least Robert Redford”? ehhhh…. no.

What has happened is a response that, to return to an automotive analogy, would be like General Motors telling you to f*ck off and stop bothering them about your dodgy gear box because you knew f*ck all about building cars or running a big company (with optional comments about your level of gratitude and parts of the male anatomy).

Which is not too dissimilar what GM used to do until the 1980s when they woke up one morning to find they had lost more money in a year than they had made for most of the previous decade. They don’t do that anymore, but have still had their arse kicked by Toyota and other Asian Tiger auto companies.

Quality is about meeting or exceeding your customer’s expectations. If the customers of Irish newspapers (or papers that are sold in Ireland with Irish-ish content) expect a bit of journalism as opposed to press-releases dressed up as reportage or opinion then the paper round has shown that we are a long way from quality in many cases.

Unless of course the people who buy the newspapers aren’t the customer. By “buy the newspaper” I mean, of course, the individual buying one copy of the paper. But what if some people have confused that with people who buy the newspaper?

If you are a consumer of a product that is increasingly failing to meet your expectations because a more powerful group is exerting influence to have their expectations met, then you will switch product or supplier. In the auto industry this happened when cash-strapped students spurnned the gas-guzzling, sometimes patchy quality cars produced by Detroit and opted for the lower cost, more reliable and more fuel efficient Japanese imports in the 1970s. The oil crisis of the 1970s accelerated that trend. By the 1980s, many of these students were trading up and simply bought the newer model from Toyota or Nissan because they knew it met their expectations of quality and cost-effectiveness better than a Chevy or an Oldsmobile.

In the Information Age, those of us who seek an alternative to the print media sources will increasingly look to the Internet, where peer comment and review and a wide array of varying opinion allow Citizen Blogger to make up their minds. Credibility and status will come not from the weight of a backer’s bank account but from the how consistently the information provider meets or exceeds their reader’s expecations in terms of incisiveness of comment, depth of analysis and the ability to take a story and peer behind the press release to question what is actually happening.

The fact that this is currently being done mainly by hobbyists is irrelevant. Increasingly organisations are looking to blogs and wikis as ways of improving interaction with their customers. It is inevitable that eventually people will be paid to perform blogalism, either through a corporate entity or through advertising on their sites that pays them more the more people visit. At which point…other than the medium what is the difference between a blogger and a ‘traditional’ journalist?

A specialist blogger in a niche area who provides reliable, well written, well researched pieces giving a different angle on topical issues will get hits and will become part of a network of ‘go-to’ people for opinion. We can see this happening already with extremely co-incidental similarities between blog posts and pieces printed in some newspapers which I’ve posted about here a while back). But how does this differ from a specialist investigative reporter?

Conclusion

If the critical comments posted on Tuppenceworth and elsewhere are indicative of the response by one or more ‘print meeja’ people to the Paper Round then the industry is in a much worse state then the survey shows.

Either there is a fundamental disconnect between the journalists view of their work or role and the expectation of the newspaper reader, or the reactions are suggestive of the existence of a more powerful ‘customer’ group who have more highly prioritised expectations of the content and editorial policies of our media. If the former is the case, then there may be some hope, as it may be that the Paper Round pricks the slumbering customer-focus of the tired and cynical hacks and prompts some push back on advertorialising and press-release reporting.

If the latter is the case then the the role and mandate of those pioneering ‘blogalism’ will become increasingly important as Information Consumers seek out sources of news and information that more closely match their expectations of reporting.

The fact that, despite our growing population, a report at the 57th World Newspaper Congress in 2004 showed a decline in newspaper circulation in Ireland of 7.8% would suggest that there is a shift taking place (source : Wikipedia, accessed 19:04 UTC, 28 Nov 2006)

When Johann Carolus printed the first newspaper in 1605, chances are the towncriers of the day dismissed him as a hobbyist who had no place disseminating news.

Update—

Just read over one of the later PaperRound posts on Tupp’worth.. some interesting points made. http://www.tuppenceworth.ie/blog/index.php/2006/11/24/sunday-independent-12th-nov-2006/

Bertie Ahern has waded into the fray on the Electoral Register issue.

Some of his comments are, in my personal experience, bizarre. For example, he says “There are still some people who did not answer the door when people called“. I was working from home the day the people called. During the day. When normally my wife and I would be at work. But I was working from home. So when the door bell rang I walked from the kitchen to the hall door (about 30 feet).

By the time I got to the door, the callers were walking out of my driveway to the next house. Total time on doorstep was about 15 seconds. I stood at the door, with the door open, for about five minutes as they walked around my estate. Surprisingly very few people were in when they called, during the day, in an housing estate inhabited by commuters and people who work. Even though I was standing in plain view and to get out of my cul-de-sac they had to walk right past me on the way out none of them thought to stop and ask me anything. So even though I was in, we’re probably logged as a no answer. However, we never received a letter from the Local Authority to verify any of our details.

“If people refuse to check the website”… don’t get me started on the bias in that statement. According to the ITU (International Telecommunications Union), Ireland ranks 32nd on the top 32 countries for Internet penetration. As of Sept 2006, the ITU puts us at 50.7% penetration… just behind such technological hotbeds as Estonia (no offence to people from Estonia). Many of those who don’t have Internet access are in the less well off social demographics, the ones most needing effective representation so their interests are met in Government policy. Is it a case of ‘refusing’ to check the website or is it a case of being unable to check the website? For people to be criticised for not following a process, they have to be actually able to follow that process. For shame Taoiseach, for shame.

Of course the Bert is correct..  you can’t force people to go on the Register. And the efforts by the Opposition to point to the removal of people ‘in error’ as being grounds for legal action and a ‘very bad thing’ is, to be honest, somewhat lazy opposing. Given the methodology that was being deployed it was inevitable that some people would be taken off the Register and there has to be an element of personal responsibility here which should compel people to get off their couches and, if they don’t have internet access to go to their local library and check the Register to make sure they’re on it and get their name on before the deadline.

What the Opposition should be focussing on is the absence of any real leadership or activity to address the obviously broken processes that have allowed the Register to get to the state it is in. They should be looking to the cost of non-quality here (how much extra has it cost to do the clean-up, what is the plan to address root causes and avoid that cost in future). For example, could the fact that remain on the Register indefinitely and do not have to re-register periodically be a possible root cause? What about the fact that you can’t change your name on the register without risking being registered twice as the only form available only allows you to change your address.

The fact that at in at least one Local Authority the Obituary pages of the papers were being used to remove deceased persons because they were unaware that they could get the information from the Central Registrations Office is astonishing. What else is going on under the covers?

That would show leadership and credibility in an opposition that should be showing its credentials as planners for the future rather than pursuers of trivial non-issues, collateral damage in pursuit of the objective which was to remove people from the Register to reduce the risk of spurious voter registrations being used to pervert the outcome of the next election.

As it stands, I’m left having to agree with much of Bertie’s defence of Dick Roche. It disturbs me that I can’t find greater affinity with the Opposition on this issue.

The current cleanup will not solve the problem. Personal responsibility to ensure you are registered is not obviated by Government actions. Just because the tools are on the Internet does not mean that people can use them. Deletion of valid voters is a risk in any Electoral Register clean up - the issue is if there is a mechanism that is sufficiently publicised for people to get re-registered. And an Opposition that wants us to see them as potential Government need to attack something meatier than a the non-issue of collateral damage and should target the fundamental lack of vision that seems to underpin the Government’s approach to this whole issue.

Simon over at Tuppenceworth is getting a bee in his bonnet about the standard of Irish journalism. I have to agree. I am a Director of publicity for an international association for Information Quality professionals. Over the past year I have submitted a number of commentaries on issues such as the Electoral Register.
Not ONCE has there been a journalist who has contacted me back on any topic, not even to say thanks but no thanks. It seems to be easier to trot out the easy soundbite than to actually research a topic (such as the Electoral Register issue - despite what Dick Roche says it is still an unmitigated disaster area and will NOT be clean come election because the fundamental root causes have not been addressed) and be in a position to ask hard questions.

For example - with Electronic voting, journalists have swallowed the line that the e-voting systems have been fully tested because that was the response to a Parlimentary Question (dail reportage). Of course, the question was badly put… if didn’t ask how many machines actually passed the tests… (answer is approximately none of them).

Furthermore, no newspaper I’ve seen in the last month has picked up on the link between the State Claims Agency report on Injuries arising from Treatment errors in the Irish Healthcare system and the number of articles that appeared in Oct and Nov of this year about people who’d had horrendous harm inflicted on them by unnecessary surgery because their patient information had been mixed up with someone elses… I’ve got an article on that drafted that links to the situation in the US… any takers?

I look forward to a day when I can pick up a respected newspaper and not be accosted by obvious press-release fodder, commercial features or limp-wristed reporting. Hopefully some journalist will pick up on the story at Tuppenceworth and run with it…

…now wouldn’t that be ironic?

Update….. Indo picked up on the Tuppenceworth story but not in the way you’d like. Apparently if you don’t like the message and can’t directly attack the messenger you should attack the credibility of the medium the message travels in. Which is ironic given that it is the credibility of print journalism that the Tuppenceworth Paper Round calls into such stark question.

the DOB Blog has been on an unintended hiatus in recent months. This was due to a total breakdown in customer service from the american company that I had registered my old domain (www.obriend.com - rip) through.

I have had this new domain (obriend.info) for a couple of months, but haven’t had the time to plan and implement the data migration from the old blog to the new blog. Luckily tonight I’ve a touch of insomina so at 3:40am on the 15th November, DOB Blog was reborn with all the old content (and user names for those of you who have posted previously).

I am playing around (again) with templates and my favourite of the day is this one… I will probably make some minor mods to it but it is clean and simple (but needs to be checked for accessibility).

Well, here’s looking forward to some more heavy blog activity….