tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244841302024-03-13T02:21:25.234+00:00static squidIf a lion could speak, we would not be able to understand himsimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.comBlogger139125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-89768350890663479692010-05-24T20:00:00.003+01:002010-05-24T20:02:16.225+01:00BORIS TO BOOT OUT WESTMINSTER PROTESTERS?<br /><br />http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/05/exclusive-boris-gets-tough-on.html<br /><br />Interesting but I wonder how this will play out, assuming the legal permissions are received. The Parliament Square protestors would probably draw a big crowd of defenders. I shouldn't be surprised to see another Poll Tax riot-style disturbance ensue.simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-31892557079815830992010-05-08T12:09:00.002+01:002010-05-08T12:31:11.571+01:00IS CAMERON THE TORIES' RAMSAY MACDONALD?<br /><br />Ramsay MacDonald was Labour Prime Minister during the Great Depression and economic crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was a period of great political instability and the major parties were split over the need for cuts in public spending. In 1931, MacDonald formed a National Government with the Conservatives to stay in power. He was expelled from the Labour Part and, ever since, his name has been synoymous on the Left with treachery.<br /><br />David Cameron was born 100 years almost to the day after MacDonald and his political rise has coincided with the greatest economic crisis since the 1920s. His attempts to do a deal with the Liberals in order to gain power are being watched by some in his party with a degree of concern. There are already grumblings on blogs like ConservativeHome and in the Daily Mail about the way the campaign was handled by what they see as a liberal clique. Getting into bed with a party that is seen by most Conservatives as beyond the pale on immigration and Europe could be a step too far for the Tory rank and file. A period of weak coalition and compromise on core Tory issues could turn the grumbles into open revolt. Is it too much of a leap to imagine Cameron, once seen as the saviour of his party, going down in history as the Tory equivalent of Ramsay MacDonald.<br /><br />(<a href="http://www.archiedunlop.com/2010/03/02/is-libran-david-cameron-a-reincarnation-of-libran-ramsay-macdonald/">This man</a> thinks that Cameron is the reincarnation of MacDonald: I don't!)simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-80241847807317311412010-01-29T23:10:00.002+00:002010-01-29T23:14:45.995+00:00BBC, FLINTOFF AND DUBAI<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>BBC News at 6 and 10 ran <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8488560.stm">lengthy pieces on Andrew Flintoff having moved to Dubai </a>to build his career as an international cricket mercenary. Flintoff is, it turns out, an 'ambassador', presumably paid, for Dubai and the BBC piece had all the characteristics of a tourist puff piece for the place. There certainly wasn't much news in it and one wonders what deals were done behind the scenes to bring it to our screens.</div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-39415537439918012632010-01-24T13:10:00.003+00:002010-01-24T14:01:05.819+00:00APPLE'S I-SLATE AND QUANTITY VS QUALITY -PART ONE OF TWO<div><br /></div><div>With the I-Slate (or whatever it ends up being called) almost upon us, <a href="http://benhammersley.com/2009/12/e-books-the-bigger-problem-part-one-of-three/">Ben Hammersley's series on the implications of e-books</a> is a must read for everyone in the publishing business. If you're a journalist, because it will show you how the right technical platform will transform the value of the content you create - and the way you create it; if you're a developer because of the pointers it offers as to what content management systems need to become.</div><div><br /></div><div>Acolytes of<a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/"> Antonio Gramsc</a>i sometimes use the phrase 'the language that speaks us' to describe how the words we have available to use form and constrain our thought processes. Something like that has happened in the world of internet publishing. We think and talk about articles, stories, images, headlines, text and video that we treat separately or bundle up together in packages of greater or lesser elegance. In our minds, we're creating magazines, or newspaper sections instead of actual web experiences. CMSs are designed and built according to this hugely limiting paradigm. Publishing companies make the minimum possible changes to their working methods to accommodate the web.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then there's the whole question of analytics: the way we measure what we do. What most publishing companies care about more than anything else is page views - the number of times a web page appears in the browser of a computer. Doesn't matter for how long, whether the user meant to call the page up, where they are in the world, whether it's one person coming a hundred times a month or a hundred people passing through once each, never to return. Did they find what they want? Did they like what they saw? Doesn't matter, so long as they hit the page, just long enough for the javascript tag to register their presence.</div><div><br /></div><div>We care about page views because we can count them and because they seem like a pure and uncontroversial metric compared with, say, unique users. Crucially, advertisers find page views simple to understand so the digital publishing economy essentially works by selling bundles of page views at an agreed CPM (cost per thousand, oddly) to advertisers. Clearly a commercially successful publisher is one who keeps his production costs below his CPM. The principal targets given to journalists and editors were page view-based and inevitably a series of practices developed to meet them. In a way these practices have come to define what a lot of commercial web publishing looks like.</div><div>o buying feeds of cheap content from agencies (such as Press Association) and rebranding it as your own. Instead, say, of employing journalists to find out something new. </div><div>o creating massive image galleries knowing that it's easier and cheaper to get users to flip rapidly through fifty or sixty nice pictures than it is to get them to engage with fifty or sixty different pieces of content</div><div>o letting the SEO tail wag the content dog. Don't get me wrong, search engine optimisation is an essential and valuable tool: it makes your content visible and helps users to find what they want. A publisher who doesn't use SEO is a fool. But using SEO shouldn't mean simply creating lots and lots of stories about Kate Moss, Madonna or, worse, shoehorning their names at every opportunity into stories where they don't really belong. "A teenage boy was stabbed just yards away from a nightclub in which celebrities such as Kate Moss partied, oblivious to the unfolding tragedy" </div><div><br /></div><div>Publishers encourage this sort of thing because their business model forces them down a 'quantity' route - producing as many page views as possible, as cheaply as possible. Inexorably, quality gets squeezed out. In newspapers and decent magazines, notions of quality are woven into the fabric of what everyone does: a piece should brilliantly conceived, properly commissioned, written with insight and intelligence, designed and laid-out with flair and so on. In many online publishing houses quality is not even spoken about: the only thing that matters is the generation of page views. Perhaps, in a Gramsci-ite way, it's no longer possible to speak about quality in this environment.</div><div><br /></div><div>But might the I-Slate (or whatever) help publishers find a way out, to restore the word 'quality' to the vocabulary of their businesses? I'll look at this in part 2.</div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-72774111707625253142010-01-24T10:28:00.004+00:002010-01-24T11:46:56.275+00:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/S1wyEde3KxI/AAAAAAAAAEE/0K9s60I9Y-A/s1600-h/IMG_0193.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/S1wyEde3KxI/AAAAAAAAAEE/0K9s60I9Y-A/s320/IMG_0193.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430270302916913938" /></a>CAMLEY STREET NATURAL PARK<div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/S1wx1050abI/AAAAAAAAAD8/aaDUKd0itao/s1600-h/IMG_0196.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/S1wx1050abI/AAAAAAAAAD8/aaDUKd0itao/s320/IMG_0196.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430270051505957298" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/S1wu0OhBORI/AAAAAAAAAD0/2QD0e6MFlxA/s1600-h/IMG_0198.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/S1wu0OhBORI/AAAAAAAAAD0/2QD0e6MFlxA/s320/IMG_0198.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430266725486639378" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/S1wuli2MaTI/AAAAAAAAADs/_j1mxp2B9cE/s1600-h/IMG_0194.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/S1wuli2MaTI/AAAAAAAAADs/_j1mxp2B9cE/s320/IMG_0194.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430266473246124338" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>When I first came to London in the Eighties we used to go to warehouse parties in Battle Bridge Road, just behind King's Cross. The area was a mix of old canal and railway buildings, deserted and rather desolate for somewhere so close to the centre of town. It was known principally as a red light district, because there were man quiet streets where kerb crawlers and prostitutes could go about their business.</div><div><br /></div><div>Development was just beginning back then and the area progressively became London's largest building site as the St Pancras Eurostar terminal and the surrounding 'King's Cross Quarter' took shape.</div><div><br /></div><div>I went for a walk around the area yesterday. There are lots of shiny modern, rather characterless buildings and shops: the Guardian have moved up there, for one. But there remain some pleasing reminders of the areas industrial past: gasometers, brown brick canalside buildings. The Battle Bridge Road warehouse where we used to party has been razed and there is some sort of development going on. I took a couple of photos, surveilled by a suspicious security man. He didn't call the police, though....</div><div><br /></div><div>The purpose of my visit was to take a look at the Camley Street Natural Park and it's Natural London photography exhibition. It turns out that the park, built on an old coal yard, came into being at about the same time that I was attending those Battle Bridge parties. It's a few acres of carefully crafted wilderness alongside the Regent's Canal and very beautiful and on a damp, late afternoon in winter, soothing and restful. I particularly like the glimpses of industrial architecture through the foliage. I wonder how long the gasometers and warehouses will remain, though.</div><div><br /></div><div>I love finding unexpected little places like this, like the overgrown botanical gardens you often find in European cities; they contrast with manicured, packaged and reparcelled, high-land-value nature of most urban space. </div><div><br /></div><div>It turned out that the exhibition is next weekend, so I'll go back then.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-29999018885026098562009-07-13T08:30:00.002+01:002009-07-13T08:51:39.249+01:00PAYMENT AND PIRACY<div><br /></div><div>If payment becomes the norm for online news and content sites - and the idea is getting up a head of steam - I wonder if they will have to grapple with the question of piracy. Will opportunistic blogs, for example, start lifting articles wholesale and reproducing them? Might pirated versions of newspapers start to spring up? My suspicion is that they will.</div><div><br /></div><div>Today there is a <a href="http://www.spotify.com/en/">report that online music piracy has fallen dramatically</a>; the reasons for this being not the music industry's hamfisted attempts to criminalise its customers but the emergence of alternatives that are more palatable to music consumers - in particular <a href="http://www.spotify.com/en/">Spotify</a>. Basically, why bother going through the hassle of downloading pirated music, when you can get what you want for nothing? This has been accompanied by a shift in attitudes to music ownership, which may be generational. Personally, I like to own stuff, to have the physical CD in my hand - or at least the MP3s on my computer. Spotify to me is a nice adjunct to that. Hardcore Spotify users, it seems, may be happy to know that the music is out there somewhere and that they can access it whenever they want. Which makes sense, especially for as long as the service is free.</div><div><br /></div><div>So instead of music being sold as a high-priced, fetishised experience, involving the physical possession of an expensive object, it's become rather commoditised - something that's out there, to be tapped into as ad when you want it, at little or no cost. The profit centre of the music industry is live performance and merchandise. Recorded music is a loss leader. The industry, and record companies in particular, are having to adapt to this new reality.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>What does this mean for newspapers? I suspect they will face a battle to shore up their porous paywalls in the face of piracy. Direct charging for content will, for many of them simply be a troubled step along the road to a completely different model of monetisation, which will change the shape of the industry.</div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-42916041491960876462009-07-12T17:16:00.003+01:002009-07-12T17:21:31.247+01:00<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/yasmin-alibhai-brown/yasmin-alibhaibrown-freedom-of-speech-cant-be-unlimited-1732847.html">Yasmin Alibhai Brown grapples with the internet in the Independent</a>. She would like more regulation - censorship, if you like - preventing what she sees as extremes of violent pornography and personal attacks (from which, she says, she has suffered).<div><br /></div><div>It is true that there is distasteful stuff online and that debate in forums and on blogs all to often curdles into abuse. But, given that the web is bound by all the laws that govern any other form of publication (libel, hate speech and so on), so we really need more constraints?</div><div><br /></div><div>Am I right to detect in her words a concealed fear of the democratisation of opinion, and a nostalgia for the days when newspaper columnists had a effective monopoly on public, published comment?</div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-76761116178450768222009-07-10T15:41:00.002+01:002009-07-10T15:46:42.916+01:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/SldTNXCQyOI/AAAAAAAAADA/jha6TrTQZU8/s1600-h/Twitscoop+-+Stay+on+top+of+twitter%21+-+Search+twitter,+twitter+client,+hot+trends.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 315px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/SldTNXCQyOI/AAAAAAAAADA/jha6TrTQZU8/s320/Twitscoop+-+Stay+on+top+of+twitter%21+-+Search+twitter,+twitter+client,+hot+trends.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356841770767403234" border="0" /></a>Quite nice and tells you quickly that there is a fire in Dean Street, Soho and presents some pretty good pics. Doesn't tell you much else, though. How did it start, anybody inside, dead, injured etc. Perhaps at this point you need a reporter asking the basic questions.<br /><br />Also, because it happened in the centre of media land where everyone has twitter, cameraphones etc. If it had happened in Newton Abbot or Burnley, it wouldn't be getting this attentionsimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-4708326790205412822009-07-10T15:29:00.002+01:002009-07-10T15:30:12.188+01:00SOHO FIRE<br /><br />The Dean Street fire seen through the lens of Twitter. Quicker to the draw than the BBC, I think.<br /><br />http://www.twitscoop.com/search?twitpic+soho+firesimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-33274287653831409342009-07-09T13:20:00.005+01:002009-07-09T19:33:50.726+01:00WHAT IS PHONE HACKING AND WHO DOES IT?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/09/newsoftheworld-newsinternational">The Guardian's story on 'phone hacking' at the News Of The World</a> is creating a mini-storm, partly because of the press's narcissistic desire to talk about itself.<br /><br />How does phone hacking work? In essence a reporter phones the target on his/her mobile and keeps them talking. Meanwhile a second reporter phones the same number and gets through to voice mail. Armed with a list of the default settings for voicemail passwords (8888 for one phone company, 1234 for another), it is possible to get through to the targets voicemail account, assuming s/he hasn't reset the password.<br /><br />When I worked on papers (outside News International), this was widespread and regarded as little more than slightly sharp practice (it's illegal now, of course). But I am certain that many journalists and newspaper groups will be quaking slightly at today's revelations. And I don't think all of them will be tabloids...simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-51708960955202689732009-07-08T16:15:00.002+01:002009-07-08T16:26:40.029+01:00THE EGO OF THE JOURNALIST 2<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/nyregion/02rooms.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=news%20meeting%20room&st=cse">Here's another piece from the NYT</a> reflecting what <a href="http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/07/04/journalistic-narcissism/">Jeff Jarvis correctly calls the 'narcissism' of journalists</a>.<br /><br />"The table was formidable: oval and elegant, with curves of gleaming wood. The editors no less so: 11 men and 7 women with the power to decide what was important in the world."<br /><br />The reporter is talking about the 4pm news conference <span style="font-style: italic;">at his own paper</span>. They aren't just debating what to put in a newspaper, they are "deciding what's important in the world". British journalists probably wouldn't put it quite so self-confidently, but many would share the assumption.<br /><br />Really, the need for this process stems from the formal size limitations of a newspaper. With print you have to leave something out. Journalists have parlayed it into something grander - a prioritisation of what matters - that is, like papers themselves, in the process of becoming obsolete.<br /><br />The web lets me decide what is important to me through a host of means: swift browsing of key sites, feed readers, recommendations from trusted sources, be they blogs, Facebook friends, Twitterers. My news agenda is different to his, hers, yours, theirs and the NYT's. So why do I need 11 men and 7 women, formidable or not, to decide for me?simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-31908007984764116832009-07-08T14:23:00.002+01:002009-07-08T14:41:14.709+01:00THE EGO OF THE JOURNALIST<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/opinion/06iht-edcohen.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=%22max%20weber%22&st=cse">Roger Cohen of the New York Times reflects, in rather florid prose, on his time in Iran and what he sees as the 'actual responsibility' of the journalist</a>. American journalists are famously serious about their calling but his sentiments would be shared by many Brits, too.<br /><br />Cohen believes that journalists can bring something to a story such as the Iranian revolution that you could not get from Twitter, Youtube or the web. But is he right, I wonder, or is he really reflecting on the pleasure and sense of self-worth that he got from being close to and observing the conflict?<br /><br />I'm not meaning to criticise Cohen - the attitude I detect in his piece is common among journalists. Ego has always been a motivating force in journalism, the desire for a byline, to prove yourself, to witness momentous events and believe you are helping shape them. But who gets the most out of this: readers or journalists?<br /><br />Do we any longer need journalists as quasi-omiscient intermediaries, reflecting on and explaining events for us? Or can we get a better, more vivid, multidimensional view from other sources? Or is the journalist's role to curate what's out there, select the best and weave it together in coherent form?<br /><br />Cricket fans used to receive their views and impressions of important matches from the pen of a Neville Cardus or a John Arlott, who are still remembered as great judges of the game and fine writers. Instead today we have the kind of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/8138912.stm">live blogs you see on the BBC and elsewhere, replete with stats, debate, description and argument, with the journalist as ringmaster</a>, rather than ultimate authority. I know which I prefer.simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com169tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-28000662385360620472009-07-06T14:30:00.003+01:002009-07-06T14:35:34.163+01:00THE AUTHORITY PROBLEM<br /><br />One thing that can make journalism valuable is its authority - the idea that the writer has knowledge or insight that cannot easiy be gained elsewhere. It is part of the personal and professional myth of many journalists that they have this authority, that they are highly knowledgeable, well connected or both. The reality is often different <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/sathnam_sanghera/article6643948.ece">as Sathnam Sanghera of the Times candidly admits.</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">"business journalists rarely get the full truth about companies. The fact is that, despite all the awards we enjoy giving ourselves, with the exception of one or two individuals, we failed to predict almost all the crises enveloping us: the Ponzi schemes, the frauds, the credit crunch, everything in fact, including Cobra. Not that it’s our fault: journalists are only as good as their sources and if there’s one thing we’ve learnt this year it is that the people running businesses are as clueless as everyone else. </span> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"> The second painful truth revealed by the Cobra debacle is that the business world is hugely susceptible to the influence of public relations. This is, in part, because business is overrun by PR people — and Cobra was more image-obsessed than most, announcing plans to sponsor this year’s Bafta awards as part of a £8.4 million PR and marketing drive only months before it went into administration — and, in part, because business is a bit boring and a good story, such as Cobra’s, gets seized upon. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"> I’m not guiltless in this respect. I was one of the hundreds of journalists who wrote positively about Bilimoria in recent years, penning a piece a decade ago that mindlessly cited growing sales without mentioning the lack of profits. Frankly, I should have realised when the company subsequently sent me some Cobra wine to try — a beverage that tasted like fermented mouthwash — that its attempts to diversify were going to get it into trouble." </span></p>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-45731251009168910092009-07-05T10:52:00.001+01:002009-07-05T10:52:58.017+01:00JOURNALISM: NOTES ON A CRISIS<div><br /></div><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">Journalism is in big trouble. It doesn't seem very long since the internet was a saviour, opening up new ways of telling stories and bringing them to the public. Now online seems to be falling into the same mire as print. Is the web going to be able to support journalism even at the rather attenuated level at which it is practised in today's newspapers? Will there be experts, investigations, scoops, exclusives? At the moment, it doesn't look likely.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">What's gone wrong?</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">1 The economics - the expectation that online everything is 'free' or, more accurately paid for by users being served advertising or handing over valuable personal data.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">2 The recession - this has made everything worse</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">3 Structural problems with the advertising market - I think these are independent of the recession and won't go away</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">4 Shortsighted management determined to do things on the cheap - poor quality of most journalistic websites. Journalism is expensive.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">5 Reluctance to embrace new ideas - most journalistic websites are print put online</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">6 Journalism isn't valued in Britain (which is often the fault of journalists) and this has led to a conviction that amateurs can do the job just as well as professionals.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">7 Web metrics, which have encouraged publishers and editors to focus on the populist at the expense of the complex, risky.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">8 Linked to 7, the death of the media 'package' wit its web of hidden cross subsidies.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">9 The dominance of the BBC.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">These are just notes to myself at the moment and my plan is to expand on each of them over the next few weeks and see where it takes me. Then I want to start thinking about what can be done to - and I know it sounds grandiose, but I can't put it any other way - save journalism.....</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p></div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-59277635476310938432009-07-01T14:40:00.000+01:002009-07-01T14:41:11.551+01:00Malcolm Gladwell reviews Chris Anderson’s book. He doesn’t like it<br /><br />http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwellsimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-40988006663601663572009-07-01T11:02:00.000+01:002009-07-01T11:03:25.891+01:00SHOULD JOURNALISTS GET PAID AT ALL?<br /><br />http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0519/p09s02-coop.htmlsimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-75123086064163036682009-07-01T10:54:00.001+01:002009-07-01T10:54:58.605+01:00AND MORE...<br /><br />http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/may/14/newspapers-blogging?plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:0fd09898-183f-46d5-bb6d-b50ca329f106simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-52864834953346768612009-07-01T09:48:00.000+01:002009-07-01T09:49:03.539+01:00MORE ON FREE<br /><br />Chris Anderson, himself, talking to the Guardian.<br /><br />http://paidcontent.org/article/419-chris-anderson-newspapers-need-to-find-the-pet-for-their-penguin/<br /><br />You can't put the genie back in the bottle....no model works perfectly etcsimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-55624839827872995242009-06-28T17:29:00.002+01:002009-06-28T17:34:06.240+01:00<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/28/review-free-chris-anderson">Review of Chris Anderson's new book in the Observer by Emma Duncan of the Economist</a><div><br /></div><div>Key quote for journalists: "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; ">Wikipedia and open-source software, for instance, are the products of something that has floored economists - that people enjoy doing, and will do for free, all sorts of things that other people regard as work."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Somewhat related, <a href="http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/06/22/oh-to-be-the-economist/">Jeff Jarvis's view that the Economist is the Apple of publishing</a>.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Key quote for journalists: "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">The good news is that quality still sells."</span></span></div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-66037889518116421692009-01-29T22:04:00.002+00:002009-01-29T22:10:23.153+00:00DES EMEUTES DANS LES RUES<div><br /></div><div>The French like a good riot and they are on the streets of Paris in protest against the global economic crisis and the way it has been handled. Why should bankers be bailed out and their comfortable lifestyles protected, when ordinary people are finding it tough, is their complaint. The overtly political and socialist context to the riots makes it feel very 1968 ish.</div><div><br /></div><div>There have been similar riots in Latvia, Bulgaria and Iceland, where the government was brought down by violent protests. How long before it happens here? </div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-84644698610658161252009-01-29T20:49:00.003+00:002009-01-29T20:58:37.810+00:00I JINX OLD ROCKERS<div><br /></div><div>So <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/01/29/solid-air-singer-songwriter-john-martyn-dead-at-60/">John Martyn has die</a>d. I saw him at the Barbican just before Christmas in what I'm pretty sure was his last gig. I only went because a friend got tickets but I ended up really enjoying it and went back to his CDs for the first time in years. Solid Air and One World, which I'm listening to at the moment, are great records.</div><div><br /></div><div>Life had not been kind to John Martyn. To be more accurate, he had not been kind to himself. He was an alcoholic, bloated, ill looking and confined to a wheelchair, having lost a leg a few years ago. I'd known he wasn't in great shape but it was still a shock. As we left, one of my friends said he didn't look as if he was long for the world, and so it has proved.</div><div><br /></div><div>He's the fourth musician whose last, or nearly last, gig I've seen in recent years. Arthur Kane of the New York Dolls keeled over a few days after we saw him at the Royal Festival Hall; Arthur Lee of Love died not so long after playing at the same venue and Ron Asheton of the Stooges died not so long ago, after I saw them playing on Clapham Common last year. Am I a jinx or do I just watch too many clapped-out musicians?</div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-23389840243426223332008-12-22T22:44:00.002+00:002008-12-22T22:52:45.775+00:00BOB QUICK AND THE TORIES<div><br /></div><div>In this great democracy of ours, you shouldn't accuse the Conservative party of<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7795334.stm"> dobbing you in to the Mail on Sunday</a>, especially if you are a police officer. Met Police Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick apologised but that hasn't stopped the Tories from demanding his resignation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Funny to see the party of law and order coming over all Militant Tendency as regards the police. Is it good politics? <a href="http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2008/12/quick-apology-should-be-end-of-it.html">Iain Dale seems to think not</a> and the electorate will note that, in times of economic turmoil, the issue that seems to animate the Tories is the Damian Green affair, that affects their own rights, rather than ours.</div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-2255765681611245702008-12-20T16:09:00.003+00:002008-12-20T16:50:06.977+00:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/SU0fjPNnkOI/AAAAAAAAACk/V6jOtLa3CeI/s1600-h/thumbnail.ashx.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GQrCgF0JHzI/SU0fjPNnkOI/AAAAAAAAACk/V6jOtLa3CeI/s320/thumbnail.ashx.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281912628214993122" /></a><br />FOR EMMA, FOREVER AGO BY BON IVER - RECORD OF THE YEAR?<div><br /></div><div>Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago has cropped up on a <a href="http://drownedinsound.com/news/4135997">lot</a> of <a href="http://www.roughtrade.com/site/content.lasso?page=albumsoftheyear08.html">album of the year</a> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2008/dec/07/bon-iver-best-album-2008-music-monthly">lists</a>. For those who haven't heard it, it's a bunch of well-crafted, tuneful indie-ish songs, played on guitar, sung in a pleasing, treble-y voice, often multitracked so that at extremes it sounds as if it's being sung by a small choir. The effects pedal is used frequently but tastefully, principally to add echo. The effect is at once intimate, thanks to the subject matter (a broken love affair), the vocal style and the use of silence and quiet passages, and sweeping, thanks to the echo and overdubs.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story behind the album is that Bon Iver, whose real name is Justin Vernon, retreated to a cabin in a Wisconsin wilderness after splitting up with the Emma of the title. He took with him a guitar, a couple of drums, an effects pedal and some basic recording equipment. He spent three winter months in the cabin, writing and recording and emerged with the songs that make up the album. The bleakness of the landscape seems to have chimed with his mood and it is easy to hear in For Emma, Forever Ago a sense of wintry, solitary despair and reflection. "Bon Iver" is, near enough, French for 'good winter'.</div><div><br /></div><div>I bought the record in the summer, played it a couple of times, put it on my iPod and forgot about it. I got it out recently and listened to it a few times: I do like it, but clearly not as much as some of its <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/may/14/popandrock.boniver">fans</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>The reviews have praised the music, but also responded strongly to the back story of the heartbroken young man in his cabin in the woods. The story adds that valuable quality of authenticity: had For Emma, Forever Ago been funded by Simon Cowell and recorded in a studio in West London, good though it is, I doubt that it would have received quite the same acclaim.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-9758374264768782632008-09-29T22:10:00.003+01:002008-09-29T22:12:40.020+01:00OCTOBER CRASHES<div><br /></div><div>A side note on the current stock markets crisis. For some reason market crashes almost invariably happen in October. Black Monday, the crash of 97, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 - all in October. Four of the biggest single-day falls in market history took place in October, and the fifth was in November. So the worst could yet be to come.</div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24484130.post-4605441592395940352008-09-27T12:00:00.004+01:002008-09-27T12:06:19.045+01:00FIRE IN ISLINGTON AND THE JEWEL OF MEDINA<div><br /></div><div>The BBC is reporting that two men have been taken into custody after setting a fire at a publishing house in Lonsdale Square, Islington. The only publisher I can find at that address is <a href="http://www.gibsonsquare.com/">Gibson Square</a>, which has recently taken on the novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jewel_of_Medina">The Jewel Of Medina</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>This book tells the story of Mohammed's relationship with his nine-year-old bride Aisha (a historical fact that allows a certain kind of person to make provocative comments about 'the paedophile Mohammed') and was dropped by Random House after an academic warned that it might expose them to attacks by angry Muslims.</div><div><br /></div><div>The BBC is not yet making these connections but it is fairly easy to put two and two together. </div>simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15333603569294208240noreply@blogger.com1