Young journalists must not lose their focus on accuracy and quality

IT was little more than a year ago and a beautiful summer's evening in Eastbourne. 

As I stared out from the seafront flat where I was living, the calm was suddenly disturbed by two police cars haring down the road, sirens blazing, screeching to a halt besides the pier.

Moments later, an air ambulance helicopter landed gently on the beach which, moments earlier, had been cleared of visitors.

I did what any journalist does in these circumstances, I chased after the police cars in a somewhat futile gesture on my bike. Fortunately, I didn't have to cycle far. Just around the corner, a car with three people inside had crashed into the wall of a shop.

Fire crews were trying to wrench open the roof of the car to free the occupants inside. A cordon was set back and a crowd had gathered to watch the emergency services in action.

As with all Johnston Press journalists, I had my trusted HTC phone. I spoke to a couple of policemen manning the cordon to find out broad details, chatted to a few people to see if they had seen what had happened, and then, using my phone, I filmed the scene.

No-one was prepared to be interviewed on camera, so instead I filmed 60 seconds of the fire brigade at work, pictures of the police and onlookers - mindful, of course, of any ethical issues surrounding the intrusion of grief and privacy!

I had earlier Tweeted a photo of the air ambulance on the beach and sent a second Tweet of the crash scene, along with brief details of the accident, all contained within 140 characters.

I then pedaled back to the office, and as video from my phone was being uploaded, I put in a few calls to the police, ambulance, fire and also the council for the basis of an initial 200-word web story. The video needed some editing, a bit of topping and tailing and then, together with the web story, the two pieces of material were uploaded onto the Eastbourne Herald website.

The video was definitely not Oscar-winning material, but within 90 minutes of the crash, a video and a web story had been uploaded, while the weblink had been signposted from both Twitter and Facebook. It was the most read web story that week. It was nice to know that I could still do it!

This is the fast-paced, multi-media world of the modern journalist. No longer are you focused solely on print, instead your target is various media platforms.

All of this was drawn into sharp focus in Sheffield this week for the National Council for the Training of Journalists' Skills Conference. The two-day seminar featured journalists, editors and journalism trainers from across the UK.

One of the more interesting sessions looked at how journalists are coping with the digital age. A sobering insight was captured by a fresh-faced but nonetheless extremely proficient Sheffield Star journalist who told a similar tale to mine at one of the sessions.

He was covering a funeral of young person who had died in a car crash. There, this young journalist was taking photos, tweeting, videoing and doing everything which could easily have been performed by at least two other journalists.

Ironically, the key part of this assignment, actually writing the story to the web, was not done by him, but instead by a colleague back at the Star who was piecing together his Tweets. Not an ideal set-up, if I'm honest.

I, along with everyone else in the room, was full of admiration for the professionalism and dedication of the Sheffield Star reporter. There's no doubt that he is a talent, someone who will go far, but sadly never once was the word quality ever mentioned. Can we really entrust such a huge expectation on young journalists and expect them to delivery the high standards expected? Or is it a case of just chuck it out as quick as we can to be first with the news?

Coming home from the conference and absorbing two days of interesting discussion, it is clear that more demands than ever are being placed on young journalists by management who are cutting costs and jobs.

Convergent journalism is important, but my worry is that quality is in danger of being lost. I think some of the expectations are unreal and these decisions are being made by managers who haven't been in the front line for quite some time, if ever. Decisions are being made by bean counters looking at Excel spreadsheets filled with numbers of FTEs (full-time employees) and editorial costs.

The one thing which stands newspapers apart from bloggers and citizen journalists is the quality of what we provide. MP David Blunkett made this very point at the conference dinner. Lumber young journalists with a workload which is almost untenable, and quality will suffer. Do that, and credibility of the regional press, in particular, will crumble.

Now as someone who is teaching tomorrow's journalists, I know how it is important to equip them with the skills to become an excellent multi-media journalist. No matter what the platform, my mantra has always been accuracy and quality. Being first with the news is irrelevant if you can't get the accuracy and quality.

My fear is that managers, while out of necessity looking at the bottom line of costs, need to be very careful about the weight of expectation they are placing on young journalists, because there is a very real danger that accuracy and quality will suffer. And then what will happen.....?