Lets be honest, if you didn’t know better you’d say it’s a parody of a political interview. What on earth must the reporter have thought!

Well, now we know! Damon Green’s explained his side of it, using the tweet-as-much-as-you-like service TwitLonger.

The part I wanted to highlight is this:

But it isn’t until our shot has been checked by all three press officers – all peering into our viewfinder and offering helpful advice about framing and depth of field (a term they turned out not to understand, as my cameraman Peter Lloyd-Williams triumphantly established) that we turn to the topic: `What questions are you going to ask?’
I hate being asked that. Partly, because it is none of their business. But mostly, if I am honest, because I don’t really know. I don’t have an interview `technique’, and this lack of technique has been honed constantly since my earliest days of not using it at the Bermondsey News. Its absence never troubled me until yesterday.

You see, getting a `grab’ for a television report is a simple enough business. You say the first thing that comes into your head. The interviewee responds with the first thing that comes into his head. And you take it from there. Almost like, well, a conversation.

I bet you’re expecting me to berate his lack of prep.

I’m not. In fact, as a general-reporter-type for an audience of people who just want to get a bit of news between some music, all of what Damon says is true. If you just need a soundbite, then you’re going to want the answer to the first question that comes to people’s minds.

It’s not true, of course, when you’re looking to run what you’ve gathered as full, sculpted, multi-minute-long interviews. Those at least need a few ‘milestones’ to come back to, but I’d still urge you not to set your questions in stone.

Not having the crutch of pre-planned questions keeps you on your toes, it makes your questions more conversational when you speak them and it makes you more attentive, as you listen for anything to spark the next question.

Of course, it does leave you open to coming unstuck if someone like Ed wants to play silly-beggars. But given the situation, he could’ve asked him what colour the moon’s buttocks are and would still have got the same woody response.

Whether intentionally, accidentally or merely as a victim of poorly informed authorities or malicious japes, journalists need to be more and more careful about the information they’re giving out.

The impact of a piece of incorrect information can be huge. For example, many cucumber traders in Europe are apparently facing huge losses because of the current e-coli outbreak being hastily – and wrongly – blamed on Spanish cucumbers. According to The Grocer:

Suppliers were reporting that cucumber wholesale prices were down by as much as 30% in the immediate wake of the crisis, despite there being no evidence at all that the UK was implicated in the outbreak.

One Dutch supplier to the UK reported a decline in cucumber prices of 25% to 30%, and said he was “effectively throwing away” produce. “It shows how misinformation can damage the entire sector, the entire country in terms of the sale of fresh produce,” he said.

It’s difficult to apportion blame to any single entity for the release of the information that did the damage there, because it’s most likely the case that the general public want for speedy info led to a chain of jerky knees and loud mouths. That’s a shame though, because the pressure placed by the public on both the authorities and the media to release information quickly is now felt more greatly than ever before.

Remember a few months ago, when we were told there was a British Medical Journal published study that said 1-in-10 male cancers, and 1-in-33 female cancers were caused by alcohol? That was at best a misunderstanding. The actual study estimated how many cancers alcohol could be responsible for, if you assume that there’s a direct link between drinking alcohol and getting cancer.

More recently, those consuming the news from a few media outlets around the world were led to believe that Osama Bin Laden watched The IT Crowd. Or maybe the Big Bang Theory. Nope, just an unchecked twitter hoax, and a lesson to trust no-one. Especially comedy writers.

Adam Westbrook put it best a little while ago. He quit mainstream media and has since called the mainstream news cycle ‘distorting and dangerous’ because of the strings of half-truths used by journalists, and the unchallenged ‘facts’ handed to them by the authorities.

Let’s be honest. There’s no simple, viable fix for this problem. With fewer journalists having to create more content across more platforms than ever before, the time for rigorous challenging of every piece of information simply doesn’t exist. It’s having to be replaced with a mild, yet cynical, trust in the information handed down by the authorities.

That can’t be a good thing.

Kabasares: Journalism – an honorable behavior Worth a read, even if only for the question: Why is it that journalists “blow up” stories out of small issues?

Beet.tv: BBC apps received more than 10 million downloads iPads are the ‘fourth screen’ apparently. Find out what that means here.

106 Jack FM on Radio 4 …talking about keeping it local on a budget.

Will you be my contact in the world of home-baking?* and other online influence conundrums Alison Gow illustrates an all-too-obvious point about ‘online influence’ calculators.

Jeremy Hunt leans towards individual stations for local TV Whether the idea will ever work still goes unanswered.

BIG grant opens up community news journalism networks The Media Trust’s been given a hefty wad to invest in ‘citizen’ journalism. This is what they’re doing with it.

Reporting live from the scene of breaking news…on an iPhone Nieman Journalism Lab has a case study. It’s interesting.

Melvin, BBC Three Counties Radio and social media Brett Spencer tells how he got a local radio station interacting through social media.

Five great examples of data journalism using Google Fusion Tables Journalism.co.uk runs us through some pieces of ‘data journalism’ – basically ways of visualising data and adding context to make it easier to digest.

How I develop my online video projects Multimedia journalist Adam Westbrook explains the way he plans for a piece.

Channel 4 News report on Manchester United What happens when a football team closes ranks and doesn’t want to discuss a subject? Channel 4 News have done a grand job of showing it.

In amongst the widgets, live wallpapers and countless random, vaguely pointless apps there are some real gems that can be a real help to journalists – here’s what I’ve found so far.

 
Audio

PCM Recorder (free): Great quality voice recorder, best interface I’ve found in a free app so far.

FourTracks Pro (£4.21): Multi-track audio editor. Mixes down to WAV.

 
Video

Most video-capable phones offer plenty of sharing options from the native app. For those who don’t, there’s Qik (free), widely recognised as the most worthwhile.

 
Social media & blogging

Coveritlive (free): You’ve seen it on liveblogs and newspaper websites. Turns out you don’t have to be at a desk to contribute.

My6Sense (free): Puts Twitter, Facebook and your RSS feeds into one place, and makes it really easy to share and save content.

WordPress (free): App for the blogging platform. You know the deal.

 
Document handling & productivity

Google Docs (free): Create, edit, upload and share documents. Perfect for keeping those notes & prep with you.

Evernote (free): Take notes in text, audio and video format, and sync it across any device you have an evernote app on.

Droid Scan (Lite + Paid): The free lite version captures photos and turns them into legible JPEGs. The Pro version makes them PDFs, but costs £6.18 – give the lite version a shot first to check out the concept.

Chrome to Phone (free): If you’re used to working to deadlines, you’ll realise how valuable it is to be able to get directions, chunks of text, anything to your phone instantly. This does that.

 
Any more? Don’t keep them to yourself! Share them via the comment form below.

6 questions that can help journalists find a focus, tell better stories Worth a read for any journalist willing to admit they’re not perfectly on the ball 100% of the time. That’s everyone, by the way.

Our experts said: Routes into broadcast journalism A summary of a chat on The Guardian’s website about how to get a job in broadcasting. Some great advice from some high-up people.

The new journalism is working with 2,000 sources Neil Mann (@Fieldproducer) has a real grasp of how to connect with people on twitter. Now, he’s blogged about it.

Must journalists attend court hearings to report accurately? An interesting question. One that’s still not got an answer, but this is a fascinating and somewhat enlightening discussion surrounding one article.

The BBC Social Media Summit: storms in teacups and cultural divides Day one of the BBC Social Media Summit caused some snarky chatter with it’s Chatham House Rules. This has a summary, and in the comments, a response from the person who decided to go ahead with the closed CHR session.

#bbcsms: BBC processes for verifying social media content Alex Murray explains how the Beeb verifies information from Twitter and Facebook.

Orwell judge Martin Bright attacks ‘disgrace’ of young journalists having to work for nothing It’s a recurring hot topic. Here’s the latest reason it’s risen to the top.

Goldsmith’s MA in Radio: Teeline Shorthand Drills

Eleven of them, designed to take you from the very first steps of learning Teeline. Audio, text, and shorthand images.

Shorthand World

A blog dedicated to shorthand! Rummage amongst the posts and you’ll find an audio file for beginners, free dictation passages, and a planned-out 12 week speed building course.

Teeline Gold Workbook (preview)

It’s the companion workbook to the Teeline Gold course book, and linked above is a hefty preview of it to get your teeth into.

Teeline Gold Speed Ladder (preview)

Want to build speed? This book’s the other companion to the Teeline Gold course book. Again, a hefty chunk of the book available as a free preview to all of us.

Google News and the Coverage of Bin Laden The founder of Google News shares his thoughts about the coverage of Bin Laden’s death

Lessons from the Osama Bin Laden coverage A look at how the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death spread, and how news organisations handled it

What’s the ideal length for an online news article? Robert Niles looks at the options.

What hiring editors look for in reporters today 10,000 words presents the results of analysing a load of job ads. Worth a look.

Pippa Middleton’s arse: how newspapers optimise for the phrase without showing it to their readers Teehee. I see what you did there. Check out Mr. Coles own URL.

Union wins first victory for intern Remember the NUJ telling every intern to demand back-payment for their work? This sets quite a precedent.

There’s a lot to take from Laura’s reporting style, taking the internet by it’s ears and shaking out any trace of a story. Read on to find out what inspired her to spend her time voluntarily reporting on deaths, how she finds stories that would otherwise go unreported, and what you can do to get the best out of the social networks.

You do allude to your reasons for setting up Homicide Watch D.C. in the about section of the website, but what was it that made you decide ‘today, as a labour of love, I’m going to start tracking the story of every homicide in D.C.’?

It has become a labour of love, you might say, but the mission of the site and the way we manifest that is born from traditional reporting and boring old curiosity.

I wanted to know what was happening with cases in my neighborhood and in my new city. (I moved to DC in Sept. 2009 from California, when my husband took a job here.) I wanted to know why Oscar Fuentes was killed at his home less than a half mile from mine. I wanted to know who was responsible for killing Sean Robinson on my block one night while I watched T.V. Why were this boy (Fuentes) and this young man (Robinson) in danger? Once I started looking into those cases and others, I realized just how much need there was for a resource that addressed these questions.

Initially the idea was very simple; Homicide Watch would simply be an accounting for all the cases. Now it’s much more than that. It’s a journalism resource number one, allowing us to ask and answer hundreds of questions about DC homicides. But it’s also a community resource. In working on the site, I saw that families of homicide victims were using Facebook profiles and online obituaries to “talk” to the victims sometimes even years after the death, updating them on recent news and events and such. It was this huge undercurrent of not grief, exactly, but of connection, running through the city. But unless you were directly connected to the families you had no way of knowing that it existed or how deeply these crimes are felt. So part of the project became creating a space for people to share their experiences and say publicly “I hurt and this is how I hurt.” I hope that having those conversations openly allows us to have a better conversation about violent crimes and their affects on our city, and on our lives as residents here.

How willing were the police and other organisations to provide details to you in the early stages?

I introduced myself when I launched the project, but got the feeling that no one really knew what to make of it. Who was I? A journalist? What were my credentials? If no one was paying me, was I legit? A blogger? What’s my agenda?

I still feel like a spend a lot of time trying to prove myself, but that I’m getting more and more recognition and help from the police and other organizations.

But the reality though is that the vast majority of my reporting is social media shoe-leather, not phone calls to cops or attorneys. Often I’ll see a Tweet to the effect of “Lots of police cars on Georgia Ave. Anyone know what’s up?” In my traditional newsroom, I would pick up my phone and hit the speed dial number for the police department’s public information officer and say “hey, what’s going on on Georgia Ave?” Now I hit the search engines. Usually I’ll be able to find out what’s going on from someone tweeting at the scene very quickly. Because my work is so focused, I don’t want to waste the time of the person on the other end of the line if I can find out easily enough on my own if I’m interested in what’s going on or not.

I have carried over some of my old tools, though. If I see some crime investigation mentioned on Twitter, I’ll turn on my police scanner and listen in to determine if it’s anything that I’d need to cover.

Has that changed as the community has built around Homicide Watch D.C.?

Since we’ve launched and gotten some very positive feedback, more and more people and organizations are certainly more willing to help. It was about two months ago where I felt like I had hit a critical mass of people who knew about the site, understood what we were trying to do, and felt like they could be a part of it. There are still some organizations that I haven’t been able to work with, but I think that given time, they’ll understand more of what I do. I recently started getting my first news “tips” from authoritative sources which was an exciting moment. It was like, “ok, people are starting to understand what I’m doing and what this is and that this isn’t just some weird death blog.”

You mention in an interview with Niemen Journalism Lab that you discovered D.C. officials put out a ‘surprising’ amount of information about homicides, if you’re willing to hunt it down. What’s your advice for hunting down that info?

The key in D.C. was to to find where everything was. I defined the site pretty early on as “anything a reporter would have in her notebook, in a folder, or on her desk when covering a case,” I made a comprehensive list of what all that stuff was then researched how to find it. It took some legwork.

I would say, take the time to consider not only what you’re looking for, but what questions you have, before starting your search. Having a question might lead you not only to a good document to use for a story, but to a whole resource to use on other stories. It’s also been important for us to publish all the primary source documents that we can. I can get down to the courthouse, find a criminal complaint and print it because that’s my job. Other people have other jobs and can’t get away during the day. I think that that same complaint should be accesible to them, too, so I put it all in an online library. The documents library is one of the most popular pages on the site. There’s a lot of interest out there for these types of primary sources and it’s worth taking the time to find them and publish them. And like any reporter, if I don’t know where to get something, I just ask.

Your example of reporting from analytics is a great example for anyone looking to find new routes to a story. Any further tips for people looking to get the most from social media as a reporting tool?

Reporting from analytics is pretty darn cool and I’ve been playing with it for a while now. I also recently had another search that was out of the blue- I can’t remember the person’s name that was being searched. When I finally did track down the case, I realized that we were about a week away from the 10 year anniversary of the homicide. That just shows me that even with cold cases, these crimes are still remembered and people still want information and they still want to connect.

Because Homicide Watch is so focused, and because our geography is pretty simple (D.C. is just one city, one police department investigating homicides, etc), analytics have been a great tool. But I also use a lot of well-crafted searches, including both daily internet searches for terms like “RIP” “tears SMH” “killed” “shot” “police” etc, and Google alerts for similar terms. It’s just like making your daily checks from your newsroom on your beat. Seventy or eighty percent of the time there’s nothing to report. But every so often there is.

Most importantly, get to know the words people use to talk about what you’re reporting on and find where they’re talking (play with the results near me function on Google). I was only able to key in to social media sources in DC once I learned how my sources talked… and typed. One of my best searches is “RIP visual,” because in DC “vigil” is often spelled “visual.” Once I learned that, my results for vigil searches multiplied exponentially.

Laura Norton Amico’s the Editor of Homicide Watch D.C., a website dedicated to telling the stories of every homicide in the district. You can find her on twitter @LauraNorton

Bin Laden photos: Editors debate showing graphic images of dead body ..and whether it even matters, as they’d be all over the internet anyway. ‘The gatekeepers aren’t keeping the gates anymore.’

5 big reasons to stay small Inspiring as ever – Adam Westbrook on the advantages of running a small news business

Dead Osama Bin Laden Photos: why have so many news sites published them? The Online Journalism Blog asks the question – why did that fake picture get through the BS filters?

Why journalists should think twice about Facebook Scott Rosenberg asks why more news organisations are heading to the social network, rather than their own sites, for interaction.

FAQ: All about ReallyVirtual The man who *ahem* ‘unwittingly’ tweeted about the Osama Bin Laden raid as it happened has posted a response to all the attention it’s brought him. Some englightening points.

No, twitter hasn’t replaced CNN It’s not just me that’s annoyed with the whole ‘twitter is better than mainstream media for breaking news’ thing, then.

Reporting from analytics: Example This is a spot-on example of using social media to find a news story. Kudos to Laura Amico.

William H. McRaven, University Of Texas Journalism Major, Commanded Mission That Killed Bin Laden The Navy SEAL that lead the team into Bin Laden’s compound? He was a journalism major. No, that’s not a typo.