PASSAGE TO INDIAA few years ago I wrote a piece for the Express about the practice of outsourcing jobs, especially to India. Back then, the focus was largely on call-centre jobs but it seemed to me that once the principle was established, it would be bound to spread to other areas and that, unless there were strong physical and geographical reasons why your job had to be done in the UK, it was at risk of outsourcing, I ended the...
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BRIXTONOSTALGIAI walked down Atlantic Road at dusk this evening. They were hosing down the market but the fishmongers and greengrocers that open on to the street were still doing brisk business. There was music from a car parked outside the hairdressers, the smell of frying food and, as ever, the sound of sirens. The lights from the shops and station seemed perfect against the darkening evening sky. The Portuguese deli that does...
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DEATH OF THE ROCKWhen I was a financial journalist, Northern Rock had a reputation for being a little, well, sharp. The deals they offered to savers and borrowers looked attractive but it generally paid to look below the surface. On one occasion, I recall, they shifted many thousands of customers out of one account into another that paid less interest, without any warning at all. Here's a contemporary account from the Telegraph.Over...
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MADELEINE MCCANN AND NEWS
The Madeleine McCann story has become a news phenomenon, holding the interest of the public day after day after day. Even when there is little to report, stories about the McCanns top the most-read lists of online news sites. And when, as over the last few days, there are genuine developments, the Madeleine story is, news-wise, the only game in town. I hope someone at Hitwise or Nielsen produces some analysis of the Madeleine effect on news websites.
It's the same story with newspapers, of course. Here, courtesy of Mailwatch are a few recent front pages from the Daily Mail and the Express.
The 'quality press' has gone to town on the story, too, filling page after page with speculation and, that traditional standby of the broadsheet, articles that hypocritically decry the nation's obsession with the story, while simultaneously fuelling it.
Taken in the round, the media coverage of the case is not a terribly attractive spectacle and it's left many journalists feeling uncomfortable. I was talking to the head of one of the biggest online news organisations a few days ago and he told me that he wasn't at all keen on the blanket coverage of the McCann story and had been trying to scale it back, but the extraordinary level of interest in the story made it impossible.
It feels like a cycle of exploitation; the McCanns using the media for publicity, the media using the story to boost audiences, the public getting some sort of emotional fix out of the rawness and mystery of the tale and its thriller-like narrative drive. I sense it is going to continue at this pitch for a good while yet.
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The Madeleine McCann story has become a news phenomenon, holding the interest of the public day after day after day. Even when there is little to report, stories about the McCanns top the most-read lists of online news sites. And when, as over the last few days, there are genuine developments, the Madeleine story is, news-wise, the only game in town. I hope someone at Hitwise or Nielsen produces some analysis of the Madeleine effect on news websites.
It's the same story with newspapers, of course. Here, courtesy of Mailwatch are a few recent front pages from the Daily Mail and the Express.
The 'quality press' has gone to town on the story, too, filling page after page with speculation and, that traditional standby of the broadsheet, articles that hypocritically decry the nation's obsession with the story, while simultaneously fuelling it.
Taken in the round, the media coverage of the case is not a terribly attractive spectacle and it's left many journalists feeling uncomfortable. I was talking to the head of one of the biggest online news organisations a few days ago and he told me that he wasn't at all keen on the blanket coverage of the McCann story and had been trying to scale it back, but the extraordinary level of interest in the story made it impossible.
It feels like a cycle of exploitation; the McCanns using the media for publicity, the media using the story to boost audiences, the public getting some sort of emotional fix out of the rawness and mystery of the tale and its thriller-like narrative drive. I sense it is going to continue at this pitch for a good while yet.
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