CAITLIN FITZSIMMONS

I have a feature in The Australian’s Media section today about Facebook and the issues with the defacement of tribute pages for dead children in Australia. I met with the face of Facebook Debbie Frost in San Francisco on Friday for a lengthy one-on-one interview and the feature is running in tomorrow’s paper. Of course, it’s already the future in Australia, so here’s the link:
The Australian, Media, 1 March 2010: Faceless no more – Facebook admits errors

After five years in London, the opportunity came up to move to San Francisco. I’m always one for a new adventure so I seized the chance and for the past few months I’ve been working on the arrangements in my spare time. Since I’m from Sydney originally, I’ve told my family that I am slowly moving home in a westerly direction!

I arrived here yesterday and I’m focusing first on getting settled in my new home and sorting out the paperwork to be allowed to work here in the US. Hopefully this won’t take too long because I’m keen to start writing for some US publications and also to report from the West Coast for British and Australian publications. There is plenty to write about, whether in my specialist fields of media, social reportage and the environment, or as a travel writer exploring California and the Pacific North-West.

My profile of Rebekah Brooks, nee Wade, is in The Australian today. The editor of British tabloid The Sun, the biggest selling newspaper in UK, is set to take the helm at News International, Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper division.

I interviewed some of Wade’s current and former colleagues at News International, including her former editor at the News of the World, Phil Hall.

The full story is in The Australian’s Media section today and online.

The FIPP World Magazine Congress is an international magazine conference held every two years. In 2007 it was in Beijing and in 2011 it is heading to Delhi but this year it was London’s turn to host it for the first time in 20 years. It was hosted by the Periodical Publishers Association, FIPP’s UK member organisation, on 5 and 6 May.

The main conference and exhibition was in Old Billingsgate, former fish markets in the City of London, with the opening party at Kensington Palace and the closing party at the Saatchi Gallery on King’s Road.

The conference had a live website, fipplive09.com. I was hired to write breaking news stories for the website, along with other people who would be writing blog posts and uploading photographs and video. I was also asked to write Twitter updates in real time from the conference sessions and the parties.

I was particularly pleased with how the Twitter coverage worked out. I pitched the idea to the PPA back in January and they were keen. We talked about options but I encouraged them to set up a dedicated account rather than piggy-backing off my personal account so that only people who were interested in receiving a high volume of conference coverage would see the tweets.

By the end of the two days we had 571 followers to the @fipp2009 account and dozens of people interacting by retweeting or replying to my tweets and even translating them into Portugese!

The great thing was that extended the reach of the conference to an audience that couldn’t be there in person. It also provided content for the website because we set up a feed to pull the tweets on to fipplive09.com. We used the #fipp09 hashtag to make it easier for people to search for related content on Twitter, though I saw that others had used #fipp as well.

I think Twitter can work really well for conferences but I think a dedicated account is definitely the way to go (or live-blogging if you are doing it unofficially). It can get very tedious when someone’s feed is suddenly full of conference reportage when it’s not what their followers have signed on for. Twitter is an open medium and anyone can do it but if you are wanting to do it professionally on behalf of a conference you need to find the right person – someone who can touch type and has the skill to condense concepts and quotes to 140 characters.

Meanwhile, for a bit of fun do check out the photos from the Saatchi Gallery closing party – that’s me and my man in the Finnish bubble chair.

My profile of BBC One controller Jay Hunt is in the media section of The Australian today.

The story is largely based on an one-on-one interview I did with Hunt – one of only two she gave in the months after taking the job last year (the other was to Britain’s Daily Telegraph).

Hunt is arguably the second most powerful woman in British television – after Jana Bennett, the director of BBC Vision. She is also an Australian by birth.

Read the Jay Hunt profile here.

Last month I wrote a feature on podcast fiction for The Bookseller, a trade magazine for the UK publishing industry. It’s a growing trend for authors, particularly in the science fiction space but not exclusively, to release their work as an audio podcast as a marketing tool.

I was hoping that the article might appear online so I could post the link but this hasn’t happened. However, they have kindly provided me with the PDFs so I’m able to share the article with you. Please click through to download the first page or the second page.

My article on music and copyright extension was the lead media feature in the Business & Media section of The Observer today.

It’s an interesting issue. A number of musicians have recorded a video message to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, urging him to support the proposals. Obviously many of them are concerned about the loss of income from the expiry of copyright on their performances nearly 50 years ago.

On the face of it, they have a compelling argument. Why should music performances only receive copyright for 50 years, while songwriting and other forms of authorship receive 70 years from the date of death of the artist (it used to be 50 years from death but this was extended several years ago)?

On the other hand, surely it’s right that the actual creator of the song should be on a higher footing than the performers? The copyright on performances doesn’t just apply to music but to any performance, including acting and dance, unless the employment contracts say otherwise.

In general I’m wary of the current trend for copyright extension – and I’m in good company with some well-regarded experts arguing that copyright is broken and counter-productive. Personally I’m not against copyright in principle – it’s a useful tool and as a freelance writer, it’s how I get paid. However, the purpose of copyright is to reward artists for their work and to provide an incentive for them to create new work. The reason it’s not valid indefinitely is because there is a competing public interest for work to eventually wind up in the public domain. Imagine if no one could reproduce Shakespeare or create a derivative work based on his plays? It enriches our culture immensely to have this common artistic heritage and the debate on copyright extension is really about how long the public should wait until work enters the public domain.

I’ve been working at MediaGuardian.co.uk two days a week helping cover a staff sabbatical. I cover various media stories, from television ratings to job cuts. Today the focus was on the terrible events unfolding in Mumbai – I found myself speaking to the Reuters south Asia correspondent on his mobile phone as he waited around the back of the Taj Mahal hotel for the body bags to be brought out. The result was this article on how the media is covering the story, plus this blog on the Mumbai v Bombay issue and whether papers that stick to the old nomenclature are missing out on web search traffic.

As a freelance writer I’m very interested in new media since I believe it will be a big part of my future. It’s not just a case of print publications moving online, it’s also a case of the internet throwing up new types of businesses. Educating myself about this is a large part of the reason why I blog at Roaming Tales and The Gooseberry Fool – and use social media tools such as Twitter.

I have some exciting news to share – I’m joining EcoSalon as a regular contributor. I’ve been asked to write two posts a week, one on green travel and one on green tech and lifestyle.

My first post last week was on eco-holidays in Cornwall and today I’ve written about 5 creative ways to be a green bookworm.

The theme of EcoSalon is about going green without sacrificing style and this is something that really strikes a chord with me. I am a passionate environmentlist but I also believe that people need inspiration and a reason for hope. We shouldn’t hide from the immensity of the challenge – but if we focus on doom and gloom, we risk generating despair rather than the committed and focused action the planet needs. Despair is just as destructive to the environment as denial.

I’m pleased to be blogging for EcoSalon because the blog is committed to the environment but with an aim to empower and inspire people rather than hector or scare them. There’s enough troubling environmental news out there – the question is what we can do about it.

I fully intend to keep my own sites and my blogging duties at EcoSalon are as well as, not instead of, what I already do. It’s a paid gig so this properly falls into my day job as a freelance writer and is probably a sign of things to come in my profession.

Mondays are a busy day in media. Not only is it the publication day for the Media Guardian and the Independent’s Media Weekly, but The Australian has now shifted the publication date of its Media section from Thursday to Monday.

Today, I have an article on global business newspapers and the Wall Street Journal in The Australian, and a feature on how traditional media are adapting to the new media world in the Media Guardian’s Changing Advertising supplement.