Our authors get journalisted

What do Nick Cohen, Max Hastings, Robert Fisk, Merryn Somerset Webb and approximately eighty other Press Books authors all have in common?

Quite simply, they’re all journalists: and a new site has just made it easier than ever to discover the work they do away from HarperCollins. Journalisted is an initiative of the Media Standards Trust — it’s a new, not-for-profit website that “makes it easier to find out more about journalists and what they write about.”

Journalisted is a database of UK journalists, including articles going back to October 2007 from 14 major national news outlets (12 newspapers plus Sky and the BBC). It’s still at beta stage, and as yet not quite comprehensive, but it’s certainly an admirable effort. The site aims to make journalism more transparent – creating a sense of accountability that might keep journalists on their toes, whilst highlighting those that provide the very best coverage.

There are also some great features for readers – you can create a list of your favourite journalists, for example, and receive emails each time they write a new article. Given that the world of journalism provides the book trade with so many of its authors, a site like this could be a handy place for eager publishers to check out both leading names and emerging talent.

You can even search journalists and articles by subject. For instance, searching ‘madeleine’ reveals that from eight journalists in total, Vanessa Allen of the Daily Mail has the most bylines to date (no surprises there), as well as telling me that Vanessa has written more about ‘madeleine’ than anything else.

Journalisted profiles also contain stacks of trivia. What’s Left? author Nick Cohen has written more about ‘labour’ than anything else, and an awful lot about ‘livingstone’ in the last month. If you’re particularly journo-geekish, you might like to know that Nick’s average article length is 692 words. Meanwhile, Max Hastings has written 44,601 words, of which ‘britain’, ‘iraq’ and ‘hussein’ were the most mentioned.

New organisation bloggers are to be added shortly (does 5th Estate count? — Ed.), as well as a planned increase in the number of publications from which articles are sourced. On the horizon are features giving journalists the opportunity to add further information about themselves, and a fascinating tool which should compare articles to press releases – so lazy journalists beware…

More than eighty Press Books writers are listed on the site – head over to www.journalisted.com and have a look for yourself.