{"id":21146,"date":"2013-01-14T11:19:09","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T10:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=21146"},"modified":"2013-01-14T11:19:09","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T11:19:09","slug":"journalist-spotlight-sarah-marshall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/journalist-spotlight-sarah-marshall\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalist Spotlight: Sarah Marshall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah Marshall, technology editor at Journalism.co.uk, talks to Cision about lean journalism, getting out and about, and working with PRs.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"SarahSarah started her journalistic career in radio before moving to\u00a0print newspapers and then online. She joined Journalism.co.uk<\/a> almost two years ago; immediately before, Sarah worked on a start-up video project in Morocco which she described as, \u2018still journalism but in a completely different place\u2019.<\/p>\n

Though she started out in local news, and still believes this gives a good grounding for any journalist\u2019s career, Sarah\u2019s specialism in online reporting about the digital news industry and technology journalists use is where her heart is. She said: \u2018It\u2019s one of those areas that is moving so quickly and is so accessible\u2019.<\/p>\n

What do you like to write about?<\/b><\/span>
It\u2019s still old fashioned journalism. I went out just to meet a contact of mine for coffee and our plan was to just have a coffee but I actually came back with a podcast interview<\/a>. She\u2019d done a project about mobile reporting in Sierra Leone, using old Nokia phones, so I got a great interview which I used on a podcast, then wrote a feature about it which was picked up by another contact of mine at Al Jazeera<\/a> and someone on the BBC World Service<\/a>. That all started with a face-to-face meet \u2013 journalism is still about that \u2013 actually talking to people face-to-face or over the phone and not just rehashing a press release or something on Twitter.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s it like working in a small team?<\/b><\/span>
I do a bit of everything; in a small organisation you\u2019re your own sub, you do bits of SEO and your own picture research. We\u2019ve actually changed what we do at Journalism.co.uk; this time last year we tried to cover everything that was going on in the journalism news space and it was actually when we were trying to keep on top of the Leveson Inquiry, we thought: \u2018Why are we doing this? Everyone is reporting Leveson. Let\u2019s just focus on original stuff\u2019. Even though we\u2019re putting out fewer stories our hits for each story have gone up \u2013 doing less to do more seems to be a better approach when you haven\u2019t got many hands.<\/p>\n

Between the editor Rachel McAthy and me, we write an average of four stories a day. I wrote a piece called 10 things every journalist should know in 2013<\/i><\/a> which took a day so I didn\u2019t publish any other stories, but it brought in a lot of traffic, more attention and Twitter followers. I don\u2019t think you should just chase traffic, but obviously if you see that a story\u2019s doing well it\u2019s nice.<\/p>\n

Where are you based?<\/b><\/span>
Journalism.co.uk is based in Brighton. When I came back from Morocco I started working there. Two months ago I moved to London. Being in Brighton, it\u2019s always that hour\u2019s journey if you want to come and meet someone so I sold the idea to my boss that London isn\u2019t just the heart of UK media, it\u2019s the heart of European media. I go down to Brighton once a week, but meetings can all be done online. I\u2019m probably out and about two days a week.<\/p>\n

And do you meet PRs?<\/b><\/span>
I do meet PRs but generally at specific events. When PRs are at different events, you get to know them and they\u2019re good contacts that I can call with ideas and requests. I have been dealing with the comms people at the Guardian for two years but I hadn\u2019t met them, so when I moved to London one of the first things I did was meet them for a coffee.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think, unless it was somebody from a key organisation that I was really trying to get to know that I\u2019d be able to meet with them, I\u2019d probably usually combine it with another meeting \u2013 when I met the people at the Guardian, I was already at another event. Because time is precious in a lean newsroom, it would need to be more specific with a purpose.<\/p>\n

How are your relationships with PRs?<\/b><\/span>
Mixed. When I was in a local newspaper\/radio newsroom, the relationship with PRs generally wasn\u2019t that good; it felt like I was trying to do stories and they were trying to stop me. Now in the technology field it\u2019s completely different. I\u2019ve been very careful all along not to always be positive to get freebies or invites to events and I\u2019ve tried to keep that at the forefront of my mind. I now realise PRs are very useful \u2013 for example I wanted to interview Vadim Lavrusik soon after he was appointed journalist programme manager at Facebook. I contacted him and the UK PR for Facebook \u2013 Emily Clarke at Nelson Bostock \u2013 contacted me and has since fed me little tip offs about Facebook and invited me to things. I couldn\u2019t have that dialogue with anyone in the company because Facebook UK doesn\u2019t work like that, but now I have someone to contact about news:rewired<\/a> or check facts.<\/p>\n

I was thinking before we spoke about who had really shone as a good PR. Joel Brown, senior press officer at CNN, knows we only do original journalism so won\u2019t pitch anything counter to that. He\u2019s very good at his job and will call to say \u2018I\u2019ve got this correspondent, they\u2019re just back from Syria, he\u2019s going to be doing a Google+ Hangout, I thought you could peg something on \u2013 do you want to speak to him?\u2019 He knows who our audience is and what will do well.<\/p>\n

The ones that don\u2019t do so well think: \u2018She\u2019s a technology journalist she must be interested in writing about the new Galaxy tablet or whatever\u2019, but I\u2019m not because I\u2019m writing about a very niche area of technology that journalists can use. If a PR has a journalism instinct and thinks: \u2018Will this story work for that site, or that title, or radio station?\u2019 then they\u2019re helping the journalist. Quite frankly, I don\u2019t want stories that other people have got. I want to be given an exclusive, the same goes for all journalists \u2013 they don\u2019t want to rewrite a press release, they need something different. I think especially with online journalism, a lot of people are only doing original news stories and what\u2019s the point of using a press release because a lot of other people will have it too.<\/p>\n

One of my big bugbears is that PRs don\u2019t seem to have caught on to the fact that Creative Commons is ten years old. I\u2019ve been at events where I can see there\u2019s a photographer there, the event organiser wants me to write about the event \u2013 that\u2019s why I am there \u2013 I\u2019m struggling for a picture. If they uploaded a picture under CC I could use it and attribute it properly. Working online, you want things quickly, you want things now; if you\u2019re doing a story about a product make sure there\u2019s easy access to a picture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/a>Take Five<\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What will be the biggest journalism tech aid in 2013?<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
Further development in terms of mobile journalism. I would like to be able to easily record phone calls on my mobile when I\u2019m interviewing someone in a coffee shop.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you have any New Year\u2019s resolutions?<\/b><\/span>
I\u2019ve half made one. I\u2019ve got a book which is a couple of years old now, called Thirty Runs in London<\/i> and my plan is to do all 30 of them. They\u2019re all kind of between 4 and 8 miles and I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m going to manage it because that\u2019s not the sort of run you can fit in before work and if you have to get on a tube to go to North London that\u2019ll take up too much time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you have any surprising hobbies or interest?<\/b><\/span>
Either camper vanning \u2013 Dolly the camper van is very much in the forefront of my life (I\u2019ve got some inner hippy) \u2013 or learning Arabic. I\u2019m kind of intermediate but it\u2019s a nice language to learn. It\u2019s purely to indulge my interest in the Arab world.<\/span><\/p>\n

What would your super power be?<\/b><\/span>
Teleporting. Even though I do enjoy the journey, sometimes you just want to be somewhere quickly and rather than looking out of the window of a bus or train I wish I was there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who would play you in a film?<\/b><\/span>
There\u2019s a film called Forgetting Sarah Marshall <\/i>and I can\u2019t remember the name of the actress in the film but she\u2019s the ex of Russell Brand in it and it definitely wouldn\u2019t be her.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Editorial information on Sarah Marshall, Journalism.co.uk and thousands of other media contacts, can be found in the CisionPoint<\/a> media database<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Marshall, technology editor at Journalism.co.uk, talks to Cision about lean journalism, getting out and about, and working with PRs.\u00a0 Sarah started her journalistic career in radio before moving to\u00a0print newspapers and then online. She …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":322,"featured_media":22812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[248,350,3532,5741],"tags":[421,676,729,1187,1951,4151,4152,4153,4154,7291],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}