Don’t judge a Blook by its cover

Posted by Lou Thomas on 8 March 2006 at 14:42
Tags: Blogs, Journalism, Online

Ding ding! It’s Round 857 between the MSM luddites and the  pale-skinned, never-leave-your-keyboard types as the BBC report that blogs have gained further legitimacy with the first ever awards ceremony for books based on blogs.

Even if it may seem a bit premature to be dishing out trophies to any old chancer capable of typing out out their shopping lists, pet hates and athlete’s foot remedies, some blogs and their later, hard copy versions like Belle de Jour have (whisper it) become familiar names to even the less net-savvy.

The Spectator survey says…

Posted by Lou Thomas on 2 March 2006 at 13:30
Tags: Journalism, Spectator

The “Sextator” moniker the Speccy attracted under Boris Johnson’s tenure may have upped its profile so what better way to flag-up the passing of the baton to Matthew d’Ancona than a sex survey?

“Citizen journalism” by any other name …

Posted by Lou Thomas on 1 March 2006 at 18:16
Tags: Journalism

Academics, unions and humble reporters can’t quite agree on what to call citizen journalists. The NUJ dub them “witness contributors”, the BBC call punters sent-in efforts “user-generated content” and Wikipedia, who have a helpful, if verbose, explanation of the term, claim some use the term “participatory journalism”.

Whatever your chosen phrase, CJ now has a father.

Steve Yelvington himself is too modest to claim any rights to the phrase but doesn’t seem impressed by the NUJ’s take on the phenomenon.

You gotta have faith (in The Sun)

Posted by Lou Thomas on 28 February 2006 at 17:11
Tags: Journalism

The champions of equality down at Wapping have been at it again today with front page news about George Michael or to use the Sun’s parlance “Gay George”.

Surely this couldn’t be the same tabloid newspaper that were critcised by the gay press earlier this month for it’s insidious homophobia?

As an ex-columnist of the same parish might have it, you couldn’t make it up.

The Long Goodbye

Posted by Lou Thomas on 23 February 2006 at 11:40
Tags: E-paper, Newspapers, Online, RSS

It’s been a week since Worrying Alan at the Guardian ran away crying from Evil Craig Newmark but the spirit of Private Frazer from Dad’s Army lives on in US tech PR guru Steve Rubel.

According to Rubel us old-fashioned MSM (that’s MainStream Media for those at the back) types have a decade to wave off print but also need to push full print content on RSS feeds on our websites and beware the tide of e-paper.

This all raises plenty of questions so here’s two: Who’s next in the queue to give journalism a kicking? And will it be ten years, more or less until people start laughing about dead trees?

(Press Gazette’s RSS feed is here.)

E-paper development: on a roll

Posted by Lou Thomas on 22 February 2006 at 11:52
Tags: E-paper

If you really can’t stand the ink on your fingers and sulk over the lack of interactivity print offers than the answer may be just around the corner.

E-books and e-paper are likely to be big news next year when the first colour versions of both will be available to Average Punter.

But Sci Tech Today’s claim of Fujitsu’s colour e-paper that “there’s no problem rolling it up” is at odds with what your humble correspondent has seen…

Hacks making history

Posted by Lou Thomas on 21 February 2006 at 18:24
Tags: BBC, ITN, Television

Veteran news presenters don’t retire, they just present history programmes. We’ve had Jeremy Paxman tearfully delving into his own past on Who do you think you are, John Suchet presenting a show about classical composers (well, they’re dead so it must count as history) and now David Dimbleby banging on about old buildings.

Should we expect Natasha Kaplinsky on Time Team in a few years?

Voices of dissent turn into a shout in China

Posted by Lou Thomas on 17 February 2006 at 12:48
Tags: Freedom of Expression, International, Newspapers, Online

Open Democracy editor Isabel Hilton suggests that criticism of media censorship in China is now coming from within the country from the very top of the media and political worlds.

As the government tightens its grip, can the increasing avalanche of dissent send the powers that be in the opposite direction?

Civil disobedience

Posted by Lou Thomas on 14 February 2006 at 09:38
Tags: Newspapers

Romanian civil servants have found a use for newspapers that stretches even the most hopeful defintion of that maligned exec buzzword “value-added”. The Daily Star reports today that the government employees “wipe their bottoms with newspaper after officials deemed toilet roll too expensive”.

Surely the columnists in Romania aren’t that bad?

The Independent offers something different

Posted by Lou Thomas on 13 February 2006 at 15:27
Tags: Independent

Whatever happened to learning Spanish? No advert for a free dvd on today’s Independent but a banner with the words “Free the chickens!” The words are helpfully accompanied by a photo-byline of the Indy’s new star columnist. Or it could just be a chicken.

Although Indy readers may admire the newspapers principled stance on battery farming, they may wonder about the juxtaposition of the other main item on the front page: A story about UK troops heading into Afghanistan under the headline “Into the valley of death”.