2006 | static squid

NUJ - what's it for?My union, the National Union of Journalists, does many good things. I've worked at two places where it has provided invaluable support to striking journalists. It campaigns vigorously against the low pay and poor conditions that afflict many in the industry.However, it has a student union-like desire to get involved in 'big politics', the latest manifestation of which is the proposal that the NUJ should affiliate...

RIPPER?You expect it from the redtops but it was slightly surprising to see the Independent christen the East Anglian serial killer the "The Ipswich Ripper".The term summons up a particularly brutal form of killing (cf Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper) so is, to say the least insensitive (though maybe the Independent doesn't think the families of dead prostitutes are worth bothering about).Just as importantly, giving killers...

OLD MEDIA v NEW MEDIAAt an Australian media awards ceremony an (old, fat, pissed) newspaper columnist storms the stage and attacks a (young, urbane) online commentator. Almost too perfect a metaphor for the frustration and stress the paper press is experiencing these days. The journalist, an Aussie poloitical commentator, says he was suffering from a migraine and was taking medicati...

GOODMAN, BAD MANClive Goodman, royal editor of the News of the World has pleaded guilty to intercepting voicemail messages and could go to jail.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6194988.stmHis boss, NOTW editor says: "As the editor of the newspaper, I take ultimate responsibility for the conduct of my reporters. Clive Goodman's actions were entirely wrong and I have put in place measures to ensure that they will not be repeated by...

HANDS OFF BLOGSTim Toulmin of the Press Complaints Commission believes there should some sort of similar complaints system for blogs. Let's eschew the obvious jibe that he is trying to grab more power for the PCC; is he right?He says that online generally"there are no professional standards, there is no means of redress. If you want to see how the newspaper industry would look like if it was unchecked, then look at the internet."Maybe...

GRADE AND THE BBChttp://paullinford.blogspot.com/2006/11/trashing-of-michael-grade.htmlPaul Linford is right to take exception at the sneering tone of some of the BBC's coverage of the defection of its chairman. The fact is that the BBC breeds an attitude of superiority in its staff and they simply can't believe that there is any virtue in working anywhere else. That, plus a love of bureaucracy, is the hallmark of the true BBC...

FAREWELL PRESS GAZETTEI wrote for PG a couple of times, and was a judge at one of their awards ceremonies as well as reading the mag regularly over the years. Its closure leaves a hole that I hope will soon be filled.Naturally, I hope the staff all find jobs soon (and I expect they will).And by the way...http://staticsquid.blogspot.com/2006/11/save-grey-cardigan-poor-old-press.h...

THE BBC AND LITVINENKORadio 4's Today programme on Friday morning was beside itself with excitement at what it thought was a scoop on the Alexander Litvinenko poisoned spy saga. It revealed that it had sopken to someone who had seen his X-rays, which revealed some 'packages' inside his body, about the size of a two pence piece, one of which seemed to have split open. There then followed a good deal of speculation about what these...

A survey here shows that journalists work many more hours than they are contracted for. Roy Greenslade discusses it hereInteresting, but hardly surprising. The fact is that lots of people in lots of professions work longer than they legally need to- ask teachers, doctors, professionals in many walks of life.What this is really about is the fact that journalists on local and regional papers have seen their wages fall in real terms...

SAVE THE GREY CARDIGANPoor old Press Gazette has probably published its last issue. Shame. Under the editor, Ian Reeves, they produce a decent magazine and a good website http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/ I'm sure they'll all find jobs before long.I do fear for the future of the magazine's Grey Cardigan column, ostensibly written by a sub on a West Country local paper. Along with the Martin Luke column in the FT, it's the best-observed,...

DESMOND WIELDS AXEMy old boss Richard Desmond defends his decision to lay off the entire Daily Express City desk and outsource the paper's business coverage to PA. Sorry though I feel for my former colleagues on the paper, I have to say I think he's doing the right thing.Though the Express City pages are pretty good, they are not what the paper is about. In any case, most daily City coverage happens like this. Journalist goes...

PARIS-LONDON, HITCHENS-LEVYI spent a pleasant hour this afternoon at the Royal Geographical Society listening to Christopher Hitchens and Bernard-Henri Levy "in conversation", part of the IQ2 London-Paris Festival. Levy is a dashing French philosophe, once summed up in the aphorism "God is dead but my hair is perfect", and he and Hitchens seemed to agree on just about everything, especailly their own importance as 'intellectuals'....

"Meritate tutti ciò, voi gli enculato di musulmani, sporchi terroristici" is what Materazzi said to provoke Zidane according to a poster on Harry's Place http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/ It translates as something like "You deserved all that you Muslim asshole, terrorist shit".French sites suggest he merely called him a 'terroriste', which seems to fit with the video that shows him mouthing something fairly pithy.Whichever,...

HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVESNewsreader Andrea Catherwood at the Regional Press Awards this lunchtime, reminiscing about 7/7 and her fraught journey into work. "Traffic was barely moving and my driver and I were complaining about London Transport.....

WORTH A READ, MAYBEhttp://discuss.pressgazette.co.uk/journalism-article.aspx?id_Content=4565http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story1913.sh...

THEY DON'T GET ITTory blogger Iain Dale wondered why few women blog. Independent journalist Mary Dejevsky wrote an ill-tempered, poorly-thought out reply. Iain Dale took it to pieces here.More than the argument about women and blogging, what this really shows is that many newspaper people are completely at sea when it comes to the Web. How dare the general public be so arrogant as to express a view - that's the job of newspaper...

PAPERS START TO TAKE WEB SERIOUSLYThe Times is following the Guardian and beginning to publish stories online before they appear in the paper. This is a big move for papers which have always regarded their internet operations as inherently secondary to their print editions (unlike sites like AOL, Yahoo! and BBC online, which publish what they get as son as they get it.In part papers want to protect their commercial interests (their...

WHAT IS THE BBC FOR?More accurately what is the licence fee for? There is disquiet about its latest scheme, which is to launch a politics and news weekly magazine that would clearly compete with existing titles such as Newsweek, The Spectator etc.The BBC has used the licence fee to set up one of Europe's dominant internet sites; it has a string of lifestyle magazines and now it seems set to go into news publishing. The BBC seems...

When I was growing up the words 'spastic' and 'spaz' (more commonly pronounced 'spa' with a kind of glottal stop at the end) were part of our rich palette of insults. Even back then they were mildly frowned upon.Slightly surprising, then, to hear Tiger Woods liken himself to a 'spaz' the other day, not least because I'd thought this was a uniquely British pejorative and because it seems to breach some of the notions of political...

Interesting item on BBC2's about the limited availability of Tamiflu, the anti-bird flu drug. Rich countries are likely to buy up the bulk of the stocks, leaving little for the Third World, the programme pointed out, suggesting that the developed world had a duty to behave altruistically in this matter.Fair enough but Newsnight could also have pointed out that in the UK Tamiflu will go first not to the sick and elderly but to...

Props, maximum respect, a big shout out etc to Guido Fawkes who devised an innovative way of gaining support when he wanted to break an injunction taken out by Rupert Murdoch. Guido used pledgebank to promise publicly that he would publish a picture of the News of the World's Fake Sheikh provided ten other bloggers did the same.There is safety (of a sort) in numbers and we can expect to see this mechanism used in future cases...

The BBC's trial of its Integrated Media Player (iMP) has been a success, apparently. Families with the player watched an average of two programmes a week on their computers, rather than on TV.No launch date yet as the iMP has to be analysed by Ofcom to see what effect it will have on the internet market. At a time when a lot of companies (including the one I work for) are looking at ways of making money out of video, either by...

David Cameron is doing his best to make the Conservative Party hip, cool and metropolitan. This description of the birthday party of a senior Tory figure shows just how much he still has to do:"Jasper Carrott compered the whole evening, one highlight of which was an hilarious tour de force by William Hague. We were also treated to John Culshaw from Dead Ringers, Lulu (who I've never really liked, but she was superb!), the Band...

In today's Daily Mail, Leo McKinstry attacks the strike by local government workers, taking particular issue with the union's evocation of the spirit of the 1926 General Strike. "Eighty years ago" he writes " the working class were facing real physical hardship. The coal miners...were battling against savage wage cuts and longer hours."The Mail is of course correct to take a sympathetic view of the 1926 strikers. A shame that...

SUPPORT NEIL NUNESSo Radio 4 has hired a continuity announcer with a Jamaican accent and Middle Britain - or parts of it - is not too happy. Listeners with names like Christopher Robins and Timmy Wren have been visiting the BBC's site to say things like "The tones, modulation and pronunciation are just very uncomfortable for Radio 4," and "His voice was American-ish but grating, difficult to understand and not at all pleasant...

THE DANGERS OF MISSPEAKING"An American radio station has sacked a talkshow host who used a racial slur to describe the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice." according to Media Guardian (registration required).Really? Well, not quite, as the story goes on to make clear. In fact the presenter was commenting favourably on Rice's stated desire to one day run the NFL when he said this:"She's got the patent resumé of somebody that...

CALL OFF THE SEARCH....Shave 'em dry by Lucille Bogan recorded around 1934"I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb,I got somethin' between my legs'll make a dead man come,Oh daddy, baby won't you shave 'em dry?Aside: Now, draw it out!Want you to grind me baby, grind me until I cry.(Roland: Uh, huh.)Say I fucked all night, and all the night before baby,And I feel just like I wanna, fuck some more,Oh great God daddy,(Roland:...

OLD FUCKI may have found a contender for the title of Earliest Recorded Fuck. And it's really quite old. More soon, once I've investigated......

JESUS SHITTING CHRIST!Because I work in the London office of a Big American Internet Company, one of things I am required to worry about is whether or not we can swear on the site.This is an issue that comes into focus at this time of the year because of the imminence of Big Brother. Quite apart from the rumour that one of the candidates on the shortlist is a sufferer from Tourette’s syndrome (though this is a story that I recall...

FUCK!The first televised 'fuck' is a celebrated moment in social and cultural history (November 13 1965, Kenneth Tynan, "I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word "fuck" would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden.")Was there an equivalent taboo-shattering moment in rock music? Obviously pop 'fucks' are ten a penny these days. Radio stations hardly bother to bleep them out. But who was first?...

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