Talk:BBC support song making chart impact

Broadcast report

Mitch Benn made several radio appearances during October to promote the single. Some elements in the article are taken from the interview with Phil Williams on BBC Radio 5 Live on 19 Oct 2010, approx 1450.

• loosely inspired by Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" and REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It"
• "the song was receiving standing ovations, and people were wiping away tears" when played on tour.

The JPS (talk) 10:24, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Original reporting notes

I uploaded screenshots from Amazon's UK chart that I made a few minutes ago, as evidence for one of the statement in the article. The charts are updated hourly so I am not sure how newsworthy the ranking is, but Mitch Benn ranks well at the moment.

• File:Mitch-benn-is-number-14-in-amazon-mp3-song-downloads.pdf
• File:Mitch-benn-is-number-one-amazon-rock-download.pdf

Some more research to explain to the general reader how well (or not) this is selling, and how significant it is (or isn't) in terms of the UK's cultural life, might be enough to get this over the newsworthiness threshold. (I don't pay much attention to the music biz or the indie scene I am afraid, so I can't really help.)

A reviewer interested in previewing the song can hear a 30 second clip free of charge at your favorite download site, such as

• http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001KKF3VK/

--InfantGorilla (talk) 11:37, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Sources

Despite some reliable sources being listed, it is understandable that the song has not received extensive attention. Many British newspapers are owned by conglomerates which also own commercial broadcasters. The neutrality of Wikinews is really important here. The JPS (talk) 10:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Delay

Why is there such a huge delay before this article is reviewed? I submitted this at 1000GMT. The JPS (talk) 16:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Stale?

This is a current event. The song is making chart progress now. Unfortunately, the article, as seems to be the annoying trend at the moment, promoted the track two weeks ago, before it was available. It's a strange publicity strategy. So, the sources from 18-20 Oct are there to support the background. The story from October is that a song has been written and will be released. The story now is that the song is making progress in the charts at the moment.

So, "New details must have come to light within the past 2–3 days, and the news event itself must have happened within a week" is completely supported.

The newsworthiness can be be supported by original reporting: for instance, Amazon and iTunes charts. From my extensive Wikipedia experience, I guess linking to those commercial sites as references is unacceptable.

I have added a quotation from Mr Benn from his official Twitter account yesterday.

As I say above, you must be aware of the political implications of why this will not receive extensive press coverage. For example, even left-wing The Guardian are going to be reluctant to report this in great depth because their group also own GMG Radio, which itself owns Smooth Radio, one of Radio 2's direct competitors. It is important for democratic social media, not constrained by commercial concerns, to disperse what the conglomerates suppress. The JPS (talk) 08:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

• The story (and the contributor) really needs to sell the newsworthiness to readers, and reviewers. (By the way, six hours is not a long time to wait for news to be reviewed: watch Wikinews:Newsroom to get an idea of stories that are ahead in the queue, and how many reviewers are active. Also it is normal for a new contributor to have a story rejected a couple of times by people who may not be around to answer questions, and have to work on it more. It is a learning process that most of us went through.)
• Links to iTunes and Amazon are fine if it is part of your original reporting (the more detailed the evidence in the Collaboration page, the better.) However, it may be hard to convince the community that this is the meat of a publishable story: I personally don't see it, as marketers routinely manipulate release day publicity to get a short term flurry in charts.
• A direct interview helps with newsworthiness: if you get your comments by e-mail or over the phone, it sells it better than quoting Twitter. Discuss your plans for an interview at Wikinews:Story preparation

The lead paragraph doesn't sell the story with a who/what/where/when/why/how of a newsworthy event. All of this is buried further down. Please research pyramid style, as other Wikinewsies are clearly not yet convinced enough by the story to dig in and copy edit it themselves. (Unfortunately Wikinews is not like Wikipedia in this sense: it is rare that more than two people, an author and a reviewer, ever work on an article.)

• This may just not be the debut third story for you at Wikinews. If you get established and hone your skills by writing more mainstream stories, you may then get the traction to change people's perceptions of newsworthiness. The other way round rarely works here - it may not be ideal, but that is just how the community is.

--InfantGorilla (talk) 11:11, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Review of revision 1123614 [Passed]

Revision 1123614 of this article has been reviewed by Blood Red Sandman (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 22:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: I'm actually ok with the style, despite IG's concerns. I am going to pass on newsworthiness because the chart impact is new; the user is making good use of non-news sources here - which is to be encouraged. Xe's getting stuck in early; experience on other projects helps, I imagine. "...after realising that it was provoking emotional responses from audiences during his nationwide tour" - you could argue a very slight POV in that, but meh. Bikeshedding, says I. Owing to the user's experience elsewhere I trust them enough for the broadcast reporting. Only real edits were some subtle style points; good work. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 1123614 of this article has been reviewed by Blood Red Sandman (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 22:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: I'm actually ok with the style, despite IG's concerns. I am going to pass on newsworthiness because the chart impact is new; the user is making good use of non-news sources here - which is to be encouraged. Xe's getting stuck in early; experience on other projects helps, I imagine. "...after realising that it was provoking emotional responses from audiences during his nationwide tour" - you could argue a very slight POV in that, but meh. Bikeshedding, says I. Owing to the user's experience elsewhere I trust them enough for the broadcast reporting. Only real edits were some subtle style points; good work. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.