Weekend paper roundup

Posted by Martin Stabe on 18 April 2006 at 10:54
Tags: Blogs, Five, Guardian, Independent, Journalism, Metro, Observer, People, Times

The continuing fake sheikh brouhaha wasn’t the only meta-news item this extended weekend.

Columnist and documentary-maker Dominik Diamond did not go through with his planned Easter crucifixtion in the Philippines, the Scotsman reported. The Scotsman also reported that the Scottish Information Commissioner will be naming and shaming public authorities that are failing to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.

Friday’s Guardian says former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie is exploring the possibility of launching an upmarket sports magazine and had a profile of Seymour Hersh, the legendary American investigative journalist who has been making waves again about his stories about the US military’s plans for Iran.

The Sunday Times says Swedish tycoon Pelle Tornberg is planning to bid for the new free afternoon commuter paper in London, the one major European city where his Metro group does not own the commuter title of that name.

In the Independent, Peter Cole argued that newspapers are vacillating between panic and complacency over bird flu. There’s also a profile of Trinity Mirror boss Sly Bailey, on the occasion of her 12.9 per cent pay rise.

The Observer says racism is rife in British newspapers, according to the Commisson for Racial Equality. In a story laden with martial metaphors, the Observer also suggests that the recent newspaper acquisitions in Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia by David Montgomery’s Mecom group is just a warmup for an assault on British newspapers. Peter Preston says the latest ABC figures show the People is in big trouble, but that this is part of a bigger transformation of the tabloid universe:

We know the ancient redtop order of things is crumbling. Lads have their boob-filled mags; cable TV runs gossip shows; websites peddle porn unlimited. The target arena, in sum, is a lot more crowded than it used to be, and the working-class audience may be Polish or Pakistani now - so not much into seaside humour and Union Jackery.

Preston also has some interesting views on the success of the newly-compact quality papers. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Independent, Times, and Guardian titles don’t owe their recent success to sardine-tinned commuters enjoying the new tabloid or Berliner format. Most of their gains, after all, seem to be coming on Saturdays.

It was also busy weekend in the blogosphere. Those who were not obsessing over the ‘Euston manifesto’ published in the New Statesman noticed some interesting things, as well. Regret the Error caught the Gloucestershire Echo naming the wrong man as a convicted criminal.

Chicken Yoghurt has some pointed questions about the Independent’s commitment to environmentalism. Why are they giving away free flights on the same front pages that fret about global warming, Justin McKeating wants to know.

On the Huffington Post, Larisa Alexandrovna accuses the Associated Press of plagairising a story she wrote for the news web site Raw Story. But the AP was independently contacted by some of Alexandrovna’s sources, so it’s all a bit of a storm in a teacup about the wire not attributing the story to her investigation. But it does speak volumes about big news organisations’ attitudes to online-only upstarts like Raw Story. Alexandrovna says an AP spokesman told her that the agency’s policy is that information gleaned from blogs does not require attribution.

Finally, forget the well-known traffic-boosting effect of a link from Slashdot or Digg. Among blogging journalists in the United States, the major traffic-driver is Jim Romenesko’s blog at the Poynter Institute. Just about every American journalist reads it, and a link from Romenesko can drive a small blog’s traffic through the roof in an instant, as one journalism lecturer in Florida discovered last week.