DEGENERACY AT HARRY'S PLACEHarry's Place is absolutely one of my favourite blogs. Its team of writers are generally informed, humane, intelligent and realistic (personal favourites Brownie and David T). The debate in its comments boxes is sometimes amusing and often informative, featuring points of views from around the world. I look at it most days and comment there from time to time.However, when the topic is Israel/Palestine,...
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MANCHESTER CITY IS LIKE A NEWSPAPERFootball clubs, like newspapers and restaurants, tend to be run as dictatorsships with a single dominant figure (the editor, the proprietor, the manager, the chariman, the chef, the owner) telling everybody else what to do and succeeding or failing based on his judgement. Kelvin Mackenzie's Sun and Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest were two examples of the same phenomenon - a driven, charismatic...
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SHARPThe redesigned FT print edition looks nice enough. It turns out to be the work of my old boss Richard Addis. It is hardly revolutionary though, which is presumably why, in an interview with Roy Greenslade, Lionel Barber, the FT's editor, refers to it as a 'refresh'.Barber also mentions that one of his goals was to make the FT appear 'sharper', which immediately took me back to my newspaper days. Whenever we redesigned, refreshed...
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RUDE BLOGGERSThought-provoking piece by Bryan Appleyard in the Sunday Times about the pitfalls of blogging. The key insight is that the more anonymous we are to each other, the less considerate we are likely to be. Many bloggers simply refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem with the tone of much online debate; I think they're wrong, for the reasons set out in Appleyard's piece.The dominant convention on the web is for users...
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MORE ON THE NUJ BOYCOTTThe call for the NUJ boycott of Israel has become worldwide news and has, in some quarters, been seen as a manifestation of media bias against Israel and Jews generally. I think this is wrong, not least because only 66 members of a union of 40,000 voted for the motion. Granted they were delegates who spoke for their branches but I suspect in few cases had members specifically discussed this motion.The NUJ...
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NUJ AND PAY AND RATESMartin Stabe links to Paul Bradshaw who reports that the NUJ is to investigate profits in the new-media sector, with a view to ensuring that journalists get a fair slice of the cake.The money generated from internet advertising is going up in leaps and bounds. Yet, as Martin says, some publishers continue to plead that it is hard to make money out of the weband use this as an excuse to underpay journalists.However,...
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BOYCOTTING ISRAELSo here's my union, the NUJ, voting to boycott Israel. A few thoughts:1. How feeble and irrelevant. What difference will it make to anything?2. The motion was passed on a vote of 66 to 54 out of a union of some 40,000 people. Democratic?2. Why does a journalists' union need to have a foreign policy? How is it going to help low-paid journalists, or help deal with the transition from print to new media - the two...
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MORE BBC BACKGROUND MUSICTonight on the News at Ten, an item on CCTV cameras soundtracked to "Stars of CCTV" by Hard-Fi. When did the BBC start doing this? W...
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TABLOID vs BROADSHEET*In the circles in which I move the prevailing view is that tabloid journalists are dimwitted and amoral, while those working on broadsheets are clever and sophisticated, and those who work on the Guardian are the cleverest and most sophisticated of all, as well as being highly moral, too. All a bit irritating, to me at least, since I worked on a tabloid for a few years - and I've met a fair few Guardian journalists...
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SEPARATED AT BIRTH?
The BBC is running an old picture of Patrick Moore on its front page today. This is what he looked like. I remember watching him in the Sixties but I don't recall him looking so fiercely impressive.
Looking at the picture I was reminded of another figure from my TV youth, Lord Charles (that's him on the left).
Could they possibly be related?
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The BBC is running an old picture of Patrick Moore on its front page today. This is what he looked like. I remember watching him in the Sixties but I don't recall him looking so fiercely impressive.
Looking at the picture I was reminded of another figure from my TV youth, Lord Charles (that's him on the left).
Could they possibly be related?
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