Guardian and Independent fall for Baltimore Mayor prank

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 28 August 2009 at 16:35
Tags: Journalism, New Media, Online

The Guardian and Independent newspapers today published stories quoting Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, apparently responding to Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling’s statement that parts of Britain were reminiscent of the television series, The Wire.

The stories related to a quote on what appeared to be the website of the Baltimore Mayor, stating that The Wire was “merely entertaining fiction”, and including a link to a YouTube video that claimed that the British TV show Midsomer Murders had depicted more murders than The Wire.

The website was so convincing that the story appeared on page four and seven of The Guardian and Independent’s respective newspaper editions. The story even made its way to the Baltimore Sun.

Unfortunately for all of the publications mentioned, the website and the quotes were all part of an elaborate hoax cooked up by Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Alex Hilton, also known as a prolific political blogger who posts under the moniker of Recess Monkey.

A quick glance at the site’s source code features a message from Hilton, which says “I’m just having a bit of fun at Chris Grayling’s expense.”

Both the Guardian and Independent have since issued a retraction.

Reuters and the supposed theft of a Lego giraffe penis

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 26 August 2009 at 12:40
Tags: Agencies, Journalism

It was a typical silly season yarn. Reuters last week published a story on the repeated theft of the 30cm long Lego penis from the model giraffe found at the entrance to the Legoland Discovery Centre in Berlin.

The penis, which was made of 15,000 Lego bricks, had apparently been stolen four times and replaced at a cost of £2,600 on each occassion.

So problematic had the thefts become, the Centre was reported to be constructing a barrier to protect the animal’s plastic phallus from souvenir seekers.

Great story. If only it were true.

Reuters yesterday corrected the story (hattip: Regret the Error) saying each theft had related to something far less titilating. Rather than the giraffe’s pride and joy, punters had been making off with the giraffe’s tail.

Maybe something had been lost in translation.

The full correction:

09:23 25Aug09 RTRS-CORRECTED-German Lego giraffe tail repeatedly stolen

(Correcting to ‘tail’ from ‘penis’)

BERLIN, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Visitors to a tourist attraction in Berlin have been making off with an unusual memento — the 30 cm long tail of a Lego giraffe.

The Lego tail belongs to a six metre tall model that has stood outside the entrance to the Legoland Discovery Centre on Potsdamer Platz since 2007.

“It’s a popular souvenir,” a spokeswoman for the centre said on Tuesday. “It’s been stolen four times now …”

The tail is made out of 15,000 Lego bricks. It takes model workers about one week to restore it at a cost of 3,000 euros ($4,300), the spokeswoman said.

Ecologist magazine founder Teddy Goldsmith dies

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 26 August 2009 at 12:28
Tags: Journalism, Magazines, People

Teddy Goldsmith, the environmentalist and founder of the Ecologist magazine, died on August 21, aged 80.

Goldsmith, brother of billionaire James, launched the Ecologist in 1970 with his first issue carrying a cover image of a man suffocating under a pile of rubble.

As the decade continued the magazine became known for carrying few pictures, instead focusing on long written articles more in keeping with an academic journal than a consumer magazine.

In 1972, Goldsmith dedicated an entire issue of the magazine to a ‘Blueprint for Survival’, a green manifesto that inspired the foundation of the Ecology Party (later becoming the Green Party) and which kept the magazine financially afloat.

The magazine, currently owned by the Goldsmith’s nephew and former Ecologist editor Zac Goldsmith, switched to an online only format in June this year.

Trinity Mirror makes 10 redundant at sales house Amra

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 25 August 2009 at 08:08
Tags: Advertising, Journalism, Media Business

Trinity Mirror has made 10 sales staff redundant at Amra, its national sales house responsible for selling advertising on 180 regional newspapers and 300 websites, MediaWeek has reported.

Six staff from the firm’s London office and four from the Manchester office accepted voluntary redundancy after a period of consulation. Associate director Sue Kemp and account director Nigel Joyce are among those to go.

This round of redundancies comes as the Trinity Mirror reported a loss of 34.5 per cent year on year in revenue from advertising on its regionals division in the first six months of 2009.

MediaGuardian advertises for readers’ club manager

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 24 August 2009 at 10:43
Tags: Journalism, Media Business

The Guardian has followed through on its consideration for a Guardian readers club, and is now looking to hire a general manager for the new scheme.

Under a one-year contract, the manager will be responsible for defining the club’s aim, putting together a business plan and developing a “membership and community strategy”.

Although the Guardian says that the scheme is in its early stages, we already know that it won’t include pay walls around the Guardian’s existing content.

A survey sent out earlier in the month asked what kind of features would entice readers to sign up for a reader’s club, stating that “benefits might include, for example, a welcome pack, exclusive content, live events, special offers from our partners and the opportunity to communicate with our journalists”.

Today’s advertisement, featured in the MediaGuardian’s print and web sections, says that the readers’ club “aims to move us decisively away from the traditional rather distant relationship that newspaper companies have had with their readers”.

New York Times plagiarist Jayson Blair becomes life coach

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 21 August 2009 at 12:37
Tags: Journalism, People

Jayson Blair, the disgraced former New York Times writer who resigned after plagiarising and fabricating a series of articles, has become a life coach.

Working at a mental health practice in Ashburn, Virginia for the past two years, he deals with clients who are suffering from everything from bipolar disorders to anxiety.

He also offers career mentoring for individuals at any stage during or after high school, including advice for employers on handling staff who are having difficulties.

Blair’s website, which features animated floating clouds and stock imagery of happy people, is notable for the absence of any mention of his controversial history at the New York Times.

However, it does mention that he has “struggled with moods, anxiety, substance abuse, career issues and many of the other areas where I coach”.

The New York Times chose to cover this story by syndicating an Associated Press article.

CBS 60 minutes creator Don Hewitt dies

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 20 August 2009 at 14:50
Tags: Broadcast, Journalism, People, Television

Don Hewitt, creator of the pioneering news program 60 Minutes and eight time Emmy Award winner, has died of cancer aged 86.

He is the second giant of the US news media to die in recent days. Robert Novak, the US political columnist and conservative pundit, died on Tuesday aged 78 from brain cancer. (more…)

Robert Novak, conservative US columnist and pundit, dies

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 19 August 2009 at 11:41
Tags: Journalism, People

Robert Novak, the US political columnist and conservative pundit, died on Tuesday aged 78 from brain cancer.

Known for his long running and greatly syndicated Chicago Sun-Times column, he came to notoriety in 2003 when he outed Valerie Plame as a CIA officer.

The scandal led to the imprisonment of vice president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who leaked the information to Novak and others.

His career in journalism began at the Champaign-Urbana Courier while he studied at the University of Illinois.

After serving as a lieutenant in the Korean War, he joined the Associated Press, ending up in the Washington Bureau.

He became the Wall Street Journal’s chief congressional correspondent in 1958, and started the long running “Inside Report” column on the machinations of the Washington political scene in 1963, which continued until his diagnosis earlier this year.

As a conservative television pundit, he appeared on the now-defunct political debate show “Crossfire” and as a commentator on the CNN and Fox News channels.

BBC journalism controller: “no new editorial launches”

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 19 August 2009 at 09:51
Tags: BBC, Law, Media Business, New Media, Online

BBC journalism controller Nic Newman has categorically stated that the corporation will not be making any new editorial launches in the immediate future.

Last week’s announcement came as he also revealed that the news section of bbc.co.uk would undergo a redesign, to be unveiled early next year.

Newman said the revamp would include a ‘ramping-up’ in outgoing links from the website.

His comments come a month after the BBC revealed plans to supply its news video content to the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Independent and Guardian, an offer rejected by News International and questioned by the Press Association.

In November last year, the corporation’s plan for a local online video network was rejected by the BBC Trust after heavy criticism from local and national newspaper groups.

Mirror launches 3am.co.uk gossip site

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 18 August 2009 at 16:21
Tags: Journalism, New Media, Newspapers, Online

The Daily Mirror today launched a new distinct gossip site, 3am.co.uk, which has been in development for the past six months. Entering a crowded space dominated by highly popular US sites like TMZ.com, the site aims to bring the distinctive voice of the paper’s 3am section to the web.

The site features interactive content, enabling readers to vote for celebrites on a virtual A- to Z-list, and instant breaking celebrity gossip.

This is the Mirror’s second major experiment with a web spin-off from the main paper’s site in recent weeks, with the launch of MirrorFootball.co.uk last month.

3am.co.uk’s paper origins are plain to see: At the time of posting, the site’s top article on Hollywood movie star Megan Fox features the notably search engine unfriendly headline “Whatever can have happened here then?”, and the site’s categories are listed as “Ooh, Gasp, Grrr, Phwoar, and TeeHee”, none of which are likely to rank highly with Google.

Washington Post’s Loudoun Extra hyper-local project to close

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 18 August 2009 at 15:43
Tags: Journalism, New Media, Newspapers, Online

The Washington Post has announced that its hyper-local journalism site LoudounExtra.com is to close after two years, claiming the project’s lack of sustainability was the reason for its demise.

The Post is to move all content featured on the site to WashingtonPost.com, and expects to close the site by September.

Kris Coratti, Washington Post director of communications, told the Loudoun Independent: ”[w]hile the Washington Post remains dedicated to maintaining a high level of coverage of the counties surrounding Washington, D.C., we found that our experiment with LoudounExtra.com as a separate site was not a sustainable model”

The project was aimed as a pilot to reach to grass roots communties around Washington DC, however it quickly attracted negative press. LoudounExtra.com was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Big Daily’s hyperlocal flop” a year after its launch.

LoudounExtra’s chief architect Rob Curley left the project after a year for the Las Vegas Sun.

Curley was quoted at the time as saying the site’s problems were poor integration with the Washington Post’s main site and ineffective outreach to the community, although he defended the principle of news sites targeting people on the local level.

The news of this local sites demise comes within a day of MSNBC.com acquiring local information aggregator EveryBlock in a deal rumoured to be worth several million dollars.

Instituto Cervantes’ “future of online journalism” debate set

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 18 August 2009 at 15:27
Tags: Journalism, Mobile, New Media, Online

A panel discussion on the future of online journalism, featuring journalists and executives from the BBC, ABC and Spanish publication Expansión is to take place early next month in London.

Some of the topics to be discussed include the perennial favourite, Twitter, the potential offered by citizen and collaborative journalism projects and how the public is reacting to the changes instigated by the internet.

The panel is to feature Nathalie Malinarich, World executive editor at BBC News online, and London-based Spanish correspondents Emili Blasco of ABC and Amparo Polo of Expansión.

Chaired by Laura Rodriguez of El Colectivo, the new online magazine for Spaniards in London, the debate will be open to input from the press and public after the panel debate.

The debate takes place at 6.30PM on Wednesday September 9th, at Instituto Cervantes.

Economist country-by-country circulation map

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 18 August 2009 at 15:24
Tags: Consumer Magazines, Magazines, New Media, Online

A site produced by the Economist’s UK Ad marketing team featuring a breakdown of the Economist’s magazine circulation and website hits is bouncing around Twitter today.

The site presents the Economist’s ABC circulation numbers in a slick Flash presentation format, which allows you to filter the results by country and continent, and to export the data as a chart.

Interestingly, the country-by-country figures reveal some of The Economist’s most unlikely readers of the print and online versions.

Iran, 222 copies, 2,233 unique users, 12,193 page views
Zimbabwe, 132 copies, 229 unique users, 1,679 page views
Libya, 131 copies, 289 unique users, 2,202 page views
Syria, 91 copies, 376 unique users, 2,040 page views
Iraq, 55 copies, 219 unique users, 1,066 page views
Sierra Leone, 14 copies 32 unique users, 311 page views
Afghanistan, 12 copies, 415 unique users, 4,390 page views
Uzbekistan, 6 copies, 497 unique users, 4,863 page views
Cuba, 3 copies, 157 unique users, 874 page views
Vatican City, 0 copies, 17 unique users, 104 page views
North Korea, 0 copies, 0 unique users, page views
Turkmenistan, 0 copies, 8 unique users, 45 page views

Government considers legal limit on licence fee top-slice

Posted by Conrad Quilty-Harper on 17 August 2009 at 10:06
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Journalism, Media Business, National Newspapers, New Media, Newspapers, Online, Radio, Regional Newspapers, Television

The Government is considering a legal limit on any possible “top-slicing” of the BBC’s licence fee to help fund news programming on ITV, in an apparent attempt to placate resistance from the BBC and the BBC Trust towards the concept of sharing the licence fee.

According to The Guardian, a “government insider” has said that the potential 3.5% “top-slice” could include a legal mechanism that prevents future Governments from increasing the allocation: however no new legislation would be needed to make funding available for public service programming on non-BBC networks in this way.

“We don’t need to put top slicing in the bill, but we could come up with some mechanism to protect the 3.5% [of the licence fee]. Our position has always been that we think top-slicing is a really good idea because it gets money into local news consortia.”

The Digital Britain consultation into top slicing is due to conclude in September. The digital economy bill, in which a range of measures will be formally introduced to parliament, will not be officially unveiled until the Queen’s Speech in November.