Episode 20 – Part 3: Being a trusted source of information amongst all the noise with Nigel Lewis, The Negotiator

The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.

 

Matt Nally  

I suppose one of the things that I was interested in I know we’ve sort of covered a bit around what makes a good story. And it’s like that’s that, I think comes down to how you angle it and understanding the audience. So the other aspect, I suppose is, once you put something out there, how is the way in which people can engage with news and content changed? Even recently, I know it’s probably over the last few years, as you said, it’s probably gone from print to digital, but what have been the general trends over 30 years and overestimate fears?

Nigel Lewis 

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think no one’s gonna get a prize for guessing when I say next, but better, which is that social media is making huge impacts on the jobs of people like me. And because it’s changing how people consume news. I think we’re coming out of the woods at the moment. So certainly for the last 234 years, particularly around what was going on in America and with WhatsApp and Facebook and Twitter, um, what’s truth and what’s fake news and all this sort of thing. I get annoyed by the fake news thing, because there’s no such thing as fake news. There are there is the stories and there’s different angles you take on it. And you a person at one extreme might call the story at the other extreme fake news. But it’s essentially the same story just reinterpreted differently. But that certainly social. I think what people are learning or I get the feeling they’re learning from social media, is that although no one likes journalists, it’s funny, isn’t it? No, like politicians, journalists, and state agents. But in fact, we all need them. We all need estate agents to sell our homes and everyone’s very nice about agents when they do a good job until their homes. Everyone slags off journalists until they’ve they’re in a position where they need someone to be their advocates in a competitive world where they feel they’ve been wronged. And equally, everyone, slags off politicians. But if you watch, you know, committee meetings of what quite a lot of MPs do daily, it’s unbelievable what they do for us, and that all they do is get slagged off for it, however, but the interesting thing is that with news is that I think people are starting to realise that what they see on social media isn’t necessarily had a robust filtering process before it was put out. And that’s fine. When it’s sort of teddy bears being chucked off cliffs, or people swallowing ice cubes for a bit or whatever, that’s fine. But when it comes to really talking about serious subjects, like housing, or whatever, then you do need it is not it is therefore a good idea to pay someone who’s got the skill set to look at the facts and work out what’s real and what’s not. And then present the story based around some solid factual data, which they have checked first. Because so I think there was a period when a lot of people said that blogging and blogging and Twitter and Tiktok and what have you Snapchat will all Eclipse organisations like the negotiator. Overnight, it has definitely undermined some of our readership. There’s no question about that, because some agents only only watch the sort of the Facebook pages now. That’s fine. They’re just competing with us with the same with this, you know, the same type of topic area and that’s fine. But there’s no one really filtering what what’s being said and going and this is the big thing about Facebook, around Facebook is is who at Facebook is working out what’s rubbish and what’s not. There’s no one certainly isn’t Twitter, for x sorry, that that has been taken over by Elon Musk. So that’s really, I mean, I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that’s an interesting debate, because you got to say, Who who is the arbiter of fact in our society. And is that do you say that As journalists, would you say that’s bloggers? Has that blogger had any sort of training? Do they have any idea what? You know, I remember talking to a blogger, and she was very good big numbers on her on her platform and stuff. And she wrote, she wrote a lot of stuff, including occasionally housing, but she’d never had any sort of legal training on what constitutes libel or defamation. And I got stuck in that, and I’ve been ever been been, I’ve been sort of attacked. So it was, it was a, it was a funny time, because you didn’t realise that you could be, you could end up in the court. And that you could be indicted and have a lot of money, you know, damages could be claimed against it, she just didn’t know that. And because she, you know, started a site in the back room of her bedroom, and it had gone gone up from there. And she did a very good job of doing some stuff about housing, but she didn’t have that. Just basic training. And I’m not saying I’m doing that, but at least I have the basics there to stop me getting sued. Touchwood so far, so. So there you go.

Matt Nally 

Does that help with? Suppose that training helped with becoming seen as a trusted lead? Just a new source? And how important is that these days? Do people know how to differentiate quite well, between what sort of the unfiltered news on Facebook and what’s a good piece?

Nigel Lewis  

Now, this is a whole generation coming up now who have been brought up who are pretty yet in their mid 20s. Now, who were brought up since they were late teens on not such well arbiters new sources, and that’s a problem. So I think older people know, they look at Twitter and go, it’s just a little rubbish. But there are younger people who probably look into it and go, yeah, that appeals to my prejudices. I think that’s true, even though it’s patently not. So we have a problem who’s done going forward. But, but it’ll be thrashed out somehow. But you know, amazingly, print magazines are still going just so. So there. There are, there is a place for them. I think it’s just everything’s fragmented, what used to be, you know, BBC One, BBC Two, ITV Channel Four, Channel Five prints, national newspapers, magazines, specialist magazines. And that was it. Now, it’s just fragmented into a million podcasts, and a million blogs and a billion video blogs. And you know, so you can, so if you’re interested in the housing market, now, there’s probably at least 25, half decent. Different audio and video, people you can watch who have views on this, and they’re quite interesting. So that has changed massively. And that’s where I suppose that’s where, you know, people who work in industry have, they have a speciality in the knowledge and they that’s the reason why they shouldn’t go online and start talking about it. It’s only when they start trying to do fact, is when I have a problem with it, so Charlie, so Charlie Borman who’s a very famous motorcyclist, and what have you, and like, you know, he’s the, if you want, if you look at his Twitter thing is great, because he’s just amazing views on latest motorbikes, he does extraordinary trips around the world, with or without his famous friend. And, but occasionally, he gets involved in sort of disseminating facts, and it goes wrong, and he has to sort of you get lots of people are going, Charlie, that’s not the case. Because he’s not the sort of person he doesn’t he hasn’t got time, and I don’t blame him, either. He hasn’t got the time to, to go and check if something is true or not, that he’s heard on our Facebook page. He would like to know Have You Heard you know, the police are starting to check motorcyclists x y Zed boots or something, you know, with and then things go, that’s not true. That’s just one case. It’s not nationwide. I’m not having a choice. I’m just having that sort of thing where celebrities get into into the land of disseminating information, which I understand why they want to do that, because it makes it positions them as a source of information for their audience. But it’s when those facts aren’t necessarily checked before they were put out. And they can be not very harmful facts, but they can also they can be harmful sometimes. Yeah. So that’s really interesting, you know, and if you look at the more and more so I remember, like years ago with the Advertising Standards Authority started sending out digital summaries for journalists prior to the before their decisions were sent out. And that’s something they’ve always done. But when I first started it was it was you get the odd estate agent or the odd conveyancer because their ads weren’t very accurate. But now it’s all social media influences who have been reported to the AASA. the Advertising Standards Authority for being inaccurate or making claims which can’t be substantiated or which are misleading, which is what the ASC is there. To try and stop. And that’s really interesting because it’s clearly more and more, it’s a digital where this is happening, not the print, not the not company blogs.

Matt Nally  

That’s interesting, I suppose it’s probably driven more and more by that need to try and compete more, just to stand out. And so everyone gets a little bit more outrageous and you can’t get up and going and going on. fact checking. I know. I saw a video recently where it was going on about my McDonald’s and how they use certain chemicals on the potatoes that then the farmers can’t go in the fields and then you fat check it and you go, actually, okay, it might have been the case, but it was 2009. Yeah, I’m not sure that’s no longer a thing. But it says, Yeah, it’s hard to, but it’s hard to go through every single thing you read, in fact, check everything. So that’s why it’s good to have those trusted sources.

Nigel Lewis  

Yeah, cuz I mean, I mean, we’re I mean, the American thing, we’re really sloppy, who’s in America, all print media have that, as well, as somebody who says that, in fact, Jeff is an online media as well, they have fact checkers, and they would never, they would never know, The Washington Post would never think of ever sending a story out unless all of the facts mentioned by the journalists had been cross checked prior to publication doesn’t happen here. I mean, it was when I worked in national newspapers, it was assumed that my journalism was at a level that which the, the I had checked with source, they just assume that but there was never checked whether I had checked the sources or not, is that you would if you were found to meet a more than a couple of bloopers, like a famous Prime Minister who worked in media before joining politics, you know, was famous, he got the sack eventually, because, because he, because he always said he got in trouble with editors, because he didn’t do that. But so there’s, there’s more latitude in the UK, whereas in America, he wouldn’t have got away with that, because the fact checkers would have said, so this this claim you’re making about Liverpool is can you just send us with what’s that based on, you know, type of thing. So he would have to say it’s a it’s just, we’re just weather. But we’re still more of a gatekeeper than a blogger who’s never had any sort of journalistic training. But there is such a thing as journalistic training and tenure. So I don’t know, a lot of people don’t have it.

Matt Nally  

So yeah, it’s nice to watch, actually, I think my final question, retiring, a couple of things you mentioned about together is, as you know, so we’ve got all these different, I suppose sources now. And as you know, you’ve got bloggers, actual new sources, people sharing their own opinions online, whatever it might be. And then you’ve got generational changes. So people that know how to, to sense check whether something might be reasonable in terms of what’s been posted online, and those are only get news online. says about younger generations? How would you then go about knowing or learning your audience to understand what message to put out? And what angles to take generally, when things are changing so much?

Nigel Lewis  

Yes. So if you take me as an example, when I first started working as a property editor, straight reporter in national media, consumer media, I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t really understand the state agents or how they worked. But my training kicked in. So I knew what a good bad story was, and you had stopped making contacts and getting to know people. But certainly, you know, I’ve subsequently worked at have worked Zoopla worked at prime locations. I’ve been at 22 years now sort of mingling in the, in the in the property industry, various levels of exhibitions and conferences and what have you. So you get to know what they are interesting. You know, I’m much more or of consuming, you know, consumer journalists, I suppose, because they they don’t have they don’t have that specialism, they just have to know what makes a good story. Because that has to understand general human psychology. Whereas that does have, as we said earlier, that does have a role to play in when you’re reporting on something specialists like the property industry, but you also have to understand what in particular get agents going. Over a pint?

Matt Nally  

Yeah, interesting. I suppose that’s probably why the negotiator awards are quite helpful because he gets to see everyone in person. Yeah.

Nigel Lewis  

And also, they’ve had a couple of drinks. So their lips are usually looser than they might be on the phone on a Monday morning. Now I’m joking. But but it’s, it’s a that yeah, those sort of gatherings are essentially you got to meet with people in fresh and press the flesh and get to know them. Both from a contacts point of view, but also from understanding the sight of the psyche of, of people in this industry.

Matt Nally  

Yeah, that’s really good point. And actually by doing that, you then get to understand your audience better and then on top of the right stuff. Yeah. Thanks for coming on today Nigel, and sharing your thoughts. Interesting. As always,

Nigel Lewis  

It’s great to chat thanks very much.

Matt Nally 

If anyone wants to sign up negotiator and sort of follow the news, day to day what how do they sign up?

Nigel Lewis  

It is very simple negotiator.co.uk So you can see the full bandwidth of the activity that we’ve been talking about there. I hope they enjoy

Matt Nally  

watching. Thanks for Thanks so much for coming on.

Nigel Lewis 

No worries. Cheers.