Entries from May 2010

Monday, May 31st, 2010

#Twilliterate?

It seems Twitter users can’t actually spell “Israel” – as the top six trending topic worldwide right now demonstrates. Perhaps the mainstream media has nothing to fear after all… [UPDATE: Oh, all right – it’s one way of spelling it. But not the US or UK English way, which is interesting in itself…]

Monday, May 31st, 2010

Bloggers are not so parasitic on news media as we thought

Via Bristol Editor, here’s an interesting post from Advancing the Story on the divergence of mainstream media content from the blogosphere and social media. A survey by The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has found that: The stories and issues that gain traction in social media differ substantially from those that lead […]

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

What’s the value of journalism?

An excellent question – and one that’s going to be debated on Friday June 11 at the London School of Economics by Channel 4’s Jon Snow and the Huffington Post’s Ariana Huffington, among others. The event is, fairly obviously, The Value of Journalism, and it’s being put on by the BBC College of Journalism and […]

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Journalism student assessment: error round-up

Just how bad can journalism student assessment work be, in terms of spelling, grammar, punctuation and general accuracy? The answer: pretty bad. Let’s have a look at some of the most common (certainly the most noticeable) problems with student assessment work this year. Apostrophes No student, absolutely none, has the remotest clue how to use […]

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Modern media is rubbish #5: how to misrepresent the uSwitch broadband survey 2010

From early this month (because it’s been knocking around the house and I’ve only just got around to glancing at it before I put it in the recycling bin) – here’s the Guardian Money report on uSwitch’s annual broadband satisfaction survey. What’s wrong with this piece of simple reportage? It couldn’t be simpler, really. In […]

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Subbing tip #9: Faze or phase?

“Faze”: “to cause to be disturbed or disconcerted”. As in: the journalism lecturer was seldom fazed by the constant mis-spellings and poor grammar of his students. “Phase”: “a stage in a process of change or development”. As in: she wanted to work in the media, but luckily it was just a phase she was going through. This pairing can be a bit of a puzzle, but don’t be fazed. […]

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Civil liberties – the progressive dilemma

What matters to those LibDem voters who hate the idea of hooking up with a Tory government? Social justice? The environment? European integration? Proportional representation? Whatever it is, it’s probably not civil liberties, as this fascinating tool from the Liberal Democrat Voice web site shows. “Authoritarian vs. liberal” tracks the voting patterns of MPs to 10 […]

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Betrayal and coalition government

Much furore on last night’s Question Time about the nascent coalition government – the LibDems “betrayed” their voters by jumping into bed with the ghastly Conservatives. And now the country is being run by a party that was opposed by 74% of the electorate. It’s all so sordid and unprincipled. The politicians just did a deal […]

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

UK election coverage 2010: Twitter vs the BBC

Just for the hell of it, I spent last Thursday night’s election on Twitter (on TweetDeck, since you ask – thanks for the tip, Soilman). At the same time, I watched the BBC’s new coverage. I wanted to see what value, if any, each one had in following and understanding the events of the night. […]

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

How the media missed the real UK election story

[youtube width=”300″ height=”200″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVLnZfVfUnw[/youtube]The main problem for the media during last week’s election was that it was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The real story didn’t happen at the count – where all the reporters were eagerly awaiting whatever electoral upset was on the cards – but at the polling stations. It was […]