Working week, 16-18 January 2012

• Working on plans for Olympics coverage: We’ve been chatting this week about how we can cover the London 2012 Olympics from an archive perspective. We’ll be blogging some archive stuff, and tweeting too, hopefully with coverage from previous London Olympics. We’re trying to initiate our own projects, rather than being approached by others all the time – it’s much better to be involved from the start so we can be realistic about what is achievable (learning from past mistakes!).

• Wikipedia blackout: We didn’t see a massive influx of queries on Wednesday, when Wikipedia was blacked out for 24 hours to protest Sopa.  Optimists would say that’s because our journalists are above using Wikipedia, but it’s more likely that they’d figured out ways around the blackout. Our encyclopaedias made a star turn for Guardipedia, when Patrick Kingsley fielded questions from readers stumped by the blackout. Shame there was no mention of the librarians (and lots of library clichés!), but he did give us a shout out on Twitter.

• Journalist queries included a 1996 article on the Olympics, Syria in numbers, recent social stories on China, examples for a panel on home experiments gone wrong, interviews and reviews for Russell Tovey and Jaime Winstone, net % change of GDP over time, MP quotes on the Work Programme and a land registry search.

 

Changes to From the archive

Last week the Guardian underwent a modest restyling, with several pages stripped back. As a consequence, our From the archive column will no longer appear in the print version of the paper (except on Saturdays), but we will still be posting it online.

While there’s more caché to having a column in the paper, there are advantages to working web-only.

• The word-limit isn’t as restrictive, so we won’t need to edit a good piece down to 480 words, or tack on an unrelated article if it’s too short (although we don’t want to start posting 1,500-word essays either).
• We can play around with the format, using strong graphics or images if we find them instead of text.

There’s some extra work involved in uploading articles straight to the web though.

• The pieces don’t run past a sub-editor, so we need to pay more attention to the copy, comparing it with the original article to make sure there are no missing words or stray commas.
• Sometimes we’ll have to write our own headlines, where the original doesn’t have one or has a poor one (19th century articles tend to be wordy).

I worked on the first batch of web-only articles last week and found a few errors in the texts. We’ve changed the rota to take that into account, so one person preps the article for uploading and someone else subs it, so hopefully we’ll catch most of the mistakes before we launch! I’ll be paying more attention to it when I find articles from now on, too.

Working week, 9-11 January 2012

• Film Datablog post: Nominations were announced for several awards last week (WGAs and Bafta longlist), but Film were busy again and didn’t have time to update the spreadsheet. I need to check with them a few days in advance next time, to make sure they can cover it, or get someone else involved for the days I’m not here. The Golden Globes are next week, I can’t decide whether to get up crazy early to update the page or just wait until I’m in the office. Shame they’re not on terrestrial telly!

• Changes to From the archive: The Guardian dropped a number of pages from the paper yesterday, including shortening the Comment section, which means our on this day column is no longer in the print version. But fear not, we’re continuing online (may blog this later). I had four to upload on Monday, phew! I’ve rewritten the instructions on how to do it all to reflect the changes, too.

• Work experience: We have a work experience bod with us for a fortnight, so I’ve been showing him some of the longer-term projects we’re working on. There aren’t many opportunities to train people in ourdepartment, so it’s good to get a bit of experience.

• Developing the intranet: Our plans for the intranet took a back seat over Christmas, but we’re getting back into it again. I’d hit a point with the design where I needed someone else to come in and advise, and a colleague is now helping me with the images, so we should be ready to relaunch soon.

•  Journalist queries included the current electorate of Denmark (took a bit of digging but I now know the words for election, postal votes and invalid votes in Danish), anything on Nick Walkley for an interview, background on Kate Freud and interviews by Lucian on family, a specific Guardian story on Ed Miliband “by a Labour frontbencher” and polls on public attitudes to cuts.

Working week, 3-4 January 2012

Wow, where did 2011 go?

• Corrections: Lots to catch up on from the festive period, so it took me a while to weedle my way through the list. Luckily otherwise it was a slow start to the week back!

• Department meeting: planning blog coverage for Olympics and other upcoming events, what to do with From the archive (will be dropped from the paper soon), engaging more with Twitter followers.

• Intranet: I’ve not worked on it for a while, but a colleague has offered to help with the design so hopefully we can relaunch soon.

• Fruitless searches: I was asked for the text of an Early Day Motion on Thatcher’s funeral from 2007. A search of the parliament.uk site was fruitless, so I checked for cuts on Factiva and it turns out the EDM wasn’t actually tabled (too controversial I assume!). If something isn’t there there’s usually a good reason. I did discover the really simple database of EDMs on the parliament.uk site for next time, though.

• Journalist queries included whether there was dancing in the Welsh valleys when Churchill died, recent polls on Thatcher (please, no more Thatcher queries…), the source of Rick Santorum’s “CS Lewis” quote (unknown, to all but him), an article from the BMJ (we don’t subscribe but the health desk do), and locating a review that’s not on the digital archive (I suggested the reader contact a specialist archive – another case of a review only appearing in an early edition so not archived, I think).

Working week, 19-21 December

The week before Christmas (six days to go, eek!) can go either way – people are starting to leave for the holidays, so it’s quieter than normal; or people are desperately trying to file stories weeks in advance so they can relax over Christmas, so it’s busier. And then there are the unpredictable news events like Kim Jong-il’s death, which spark a bit of a research frenzy.

• 10 Facts on North Korea for the Datablog: The editor is away so asked me to pull together a collection of Datablog stats following the death of Kim Jong-il, announced on Monday morning. I didn’t have time to pop in graphics or images but quite pleased with the end result. We switched the headline because G2 had already launched a similar piece (which I’m sure we could have helped with!).

• Added the Golden Globes nominations to the Award season 2011-12 Datablog post - Film forgot (unsurprisingly, Thursday is probably their busiest day), so I’ll make sure to check in with them on the day next time. Added the London Critics Circle noms too.

• From the archive: Finished editing a piece on Churchill’s appearance before Congress (27 Dec 1941), and found a Jan 7 piece from 1970 on sex changes. I had to correct something an eagle-eyed reader spotted on the 20 December piece (1913 – merriest Christmas in history?), too – a transcription error meant we referred to 1/5d instead of 1/2d, and there were a few stray commas and hyphens as well (which happens sometimes when you copy the text of the original, if there’s a mark on the page). We’re all pretty thorough but errors do sometimes slip through! Have to pay more attention in future.

• Corrections: It’s not often that one of our more dull jobs makes the news! The Guardian has published a correction relating to the claims the Milly Dowler’s voicemails were deleted, which we printed in July based on evidence at the time. We have the mundane task of attaching the correction to all the articles.

• Trialling Newsvault: I set up a trial of Gale NewsVault following a meeting at Online Information, and it’s really interesting to see another example of a digital archive. It includes the Picture Post, which is referenced in the sex change story I found for From the archive (one of the first cases in the UK told her story to them in 1954). Brilliant to be able to call up the original coverage!

• Other queries included contact details for Kate Nash, a phone number for an old contact and helping a US high school librarian with a citation for a From the archive piece (more confusing than I first thought!).

Working week, 12-14 December

• Film award nominees and winners 2011-12 for the Datablog: In 2009 I ran a spreadsheet on the major film award nominees and winners, and the Film editor has asked for it again this year. I’m quite chuffed, I love the build-up to the Oscars so it’s fun to be able to track it all for work! Nice that the film team found it useful and suggested it themselves, too. They’re even going to help me update it so there’ll be fewer Sunday evenings spent thinking about spreadsheets!

• Events diaries: We keep track of upcoming events in national, foreign and arts news. The diary was hosted on our intranet page originally, then we switched to Google Calendars a few years ago, and last month these were shared on the Guardian site as part of the Open News experiment. Which means even more pressure to keep them up to date! A quiet few days meant I could get a few months under our belt.

• From the archive: We’re trying to get the Christmas period out of the way, and we have more space to play with over Christmas week. I’ve found a Dev Anand film being made on Everest (28 December 1973), a cheery news piece from 1831 about cholera outbreaks in the north east (31 Dec) and a 1941 piece about Churchill’s address to Congress (27 Dec).

• Journalist queries included frequency stats on various austerity phrases in the UK press over the last few years, an article from Broadcast (there’s a paywall online), statistics for a graphic on metal theft, cuts on the Murdoch pie thrower and an attempt to track down the man punched by Prescott in 2001.

Training: Tweetdeck, 22 November 2011

I’ve been using Twitter for a few years but I’m behind the times with my software! Following a talk about the use of Twitter, I signed up for a Tweetdeck intro session with John Stuttle, one of the Guardian’s systems editors.

Tweetdeck offers much more usability than the basic Twitter feed. Key for me is that it allows you to track more than one account at once (and from more than one social network), to tweet from more than one account simultaneously (say my personal and department ones) and to publish timed tweets (so we could set a tweet to launch the weekend’s From the archive in advance, for example).

John recommended signing up for a bit.ly account as well, which allows you to analyse the statistics on how many people used your link to click through to a story, versus other links, and use that to improve your tweeting. Bit.ly provides various other stats too – to view statistics and graphs just click the Analyze link at the top once you’re signed in, or click on Info Page next to an individual link.

 

Working week, 28-30 November 2011

Not too much to report this week – I spent most of Tuesday at Online Information (report to follow soon) and had time off for a sick toddler and the strike. Such a skiver!

Key topics this week:

• Uploading From the archive – I was uploading on Monday so I added the on this day story for Saturday 26 Nov 1923 – French try to crack mystery of humour (love the pic!) and Monday 28 November 1970 – Mystery cellist drama (tongue-in-cheek comment on cold war relations).
• Blogged some articles on Women in Love following Ken Russell’s death.
• Found a nice piece on the repeal of Prohibition for next week’s From the archive (Dec 6) – effigy of “Old Man Prohibition” pulled through New York by a camel! And a few court reports from 1862 for Dec 9.
• Prepped a Datablog post on the Grammy award nominations – a bit tricky as the nominations aren’t announced until the wee hours of Thursday but hopefully whoever launches the story will fill in all the missing blanks!
• Journalist queries included the 1957 Wolfenden Report, the Tory share of the electorate last year, the UK’s current wage share, the Guardian First Book award, a Companies House search and the average public sector pension.

Working week, 21-23 November 2011

I’ve decided to revamp the Working Week because it’s getting a bit samey (and if I’m bored of it everyone else must be!). From now on I’ll compile a greatest hits type list of the key jobs I’ve done every week. Hopefully that’ll help focus my mind on areas to develop for Chartership too…

Key queries this week:

• Left/right political map of Europe – we launched this a few months ago, quickly followed by numerous corrections, and it’s been decided to keep it up-to-date instead of as a snapshot of a particular moment, so I’ve added the most recent elections in Denmark, Poland, Spain and Latvia (me either), as well as the changes in Greece and Italy. We republished it yesterday (Tuesday) and have had some reader feedback so I spent a couple of hours addressing those this morning. One of the main issues is one of syntax – when it was first created the interactive struggled to recognise special characters (accents, umlauts etc) and although that was fixed several names hadn’t been corrected. In the end the quickest solution was to work through the full list, which took time but was worth it (letters were missing from leaders of four or five countries! Don’t know whether to be pleased some readers noticed or annoyed that more didn’t). The other issue raised is more subjective – the graphic classes each government as either left or right, red or blue on the map. Many governments, particularly coalitions, don’t fall into one or other camp easily, so there is some question over where we’ve placed certain politicians. We’re going to look into each query raised, but we have to make a decision for the graphic to work and that’s not always going to please everyone.

• JFK anniversary blogpost – The America team realised mid-afternooon yesterday (Tuesday) that it was the 48th anniversary of the shooting of JFK. We’re trying to build traffic to the US site, so they asked for an archive blog on the assassination. It was a really quick turnaround – normally I take half a day at least to write a blogpost, check it, redraft  - but successful because we all chipped in, so the post was a real team effort. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written (my uni lecturers wouldn’t have been impressed, it’s like JFK 101) but it did the job and our SEO guy was hugely grateful. He wasn’t even phased when I launched it with the wrong URL. Schoolboy error.

• Quick blogpost on Doctor Who anniversary – I noticed this morning (Wednesday) that it’s the 48th anniversary since the first Doctor Who episode aired on British telly (thanks @neilhimself!). While it’s obviously dwarfed by the JFK anniversary, it’s the sort of topic that can get large amounts of traffic, so I looked up the first Guardian review (a week after the event) and launched a quick blogpost with just the one archive piece. [Mon 28th - so far it has 219 recommendations and 71 comments, popular topic!]

• Corrections – I was on corrections this week, adding those printed in the paper and online to the relevant articles.

• Journalist queries this week included cuts on Celia Imrie, Kirsty Wark, Patricia Cornwell, female deputy editors, a bundle on the state of play in Afghanistan and cuts about chemical castration. Yes, chemical castration.

Working week, 24-26 October

Monday 24 October

• Added today’s and the weekend’s corrections to relevant articles – the Corrections team is quite rightly changing the way it works (see Leslie Plommer’s Open door column from today’s Guardian), so we’re trying to find the best way to cope with the idea of rolling corrections (some of which won’t appear in the paper), but for now we’re still doing it once a day. Took me a while to pick through the various versions of the column (online/in print) but got there in the end
• Restored the bookmarks to our department Delicious account (they were lost in the transition from Yahoo last month). Now that they’re back I need to do some editing
• Journalist query – articles on Northern Rock pre-collapse (got the wrong end of the stick initially and did an entirely pointless search, must learn to ask for clarification if I’m not sure about something instead of guessing!)
• Added various legal warnings to the relevant articles, and deleted an article from another paper that’s under investigation
• Journalist query – profiles of Umberto Eco
• Prepped my presentation for the Graduate Open Day tomorrow – my first talk, frankly terrified but I’m sure they’ll be gentle…

Tuesday 25 October

• Added today’s paper and online corrections and clarifications to articles
• Quick check on a source for a journalist – Theatre Record – we don’t subscribe, hate letting people down (but guess we can’t subscribe to everything)
• Meeting about the intranet revamp
• Asked for suggestions for a new name for the intranet – posted stories to the company intranet and noticeboard
• Graduate Open Day talk – scary!
• From the archive for next week – 3 Nov 1921, miscellany – always a good column to check for quirky pieces
• Journalist query – number of deaths in Libya

Wednesday 26 October

• Journalist query – background on Cumnock for a reporter who is there to cover the Stuart Walker murder – news cuts from regionals from  Factiva, stats from  the Scottish government (took a bit of digging)
• Added today’s paper and online corrections to the relevant articles
• Quite a few legal amendments and deletions today
• Journalist query – follow-up from yesterday, trying to find a figure for deaths in Libya before Nato intervened
• Reader query – someone doing a talk was after GSCE stats by London borough – wouldn’t normally do this type of query but I knew we had the data on the Datablog so it was quick!
• Updated the Datablog on the Booker prize shortlist sales with latest figures to show the immediate aftermath of the prize-giving
• Had a go at adding images to the new intranet portal page – with varying degrees of success!