Entries from July 2010

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

What’s the problem with the Query Posts WordPress plug-in?

Warning: intense WordPress geekery ahead . WordPress has gone all version 3.0 recently, and plug-in authors have been busily updating their software. This has been fine so far, but yesterday I updated the fine Query Posts plug-in by high-profile WordPress author Justin Tadlock. And it has screwed up. Query Posts is a super useful and […]

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Lessons from Clinique – big brands draw a big audience

Goodness, Freelance Unbound is suddenly all over the interweb thanks to yesterday’s get-your-own-back-on-tiresome-PR-departments post about Clinique. It was picked up by Jim Romenesko of journalism university the Poynter Institute, who wrote a news brief about the story. Cue a tsunami of traffic (by Freelance Unbound’s modest standards) and a wealth of comments. There are a […]

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Tales from the trade press: Clinique’s press office hell

Regular readers will know something of the trials of the freelance trade press journalist. Here’s another instalment, which gives an interesting insight into how some brands see the idea of “communication”. The past couple of weeks of my scintillating media life have been taken up with writing a business-to-business (b2b) feature on male grooming for […]

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

American Splendour author Harvey Pekar dies aged 70

Just found out that Harvey Pekar – arguably the father of autobiographical comics – has died aged 70. He wrote about his brush with lymphatic cancer in the award-winning graphic novel Our Cancer Year in 1994 and chronicled his everyday life in Cleveland from the 1980s onward in American Splendour. Inexplicably, given its un-Hollywood nature, […]

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Tameside Council blocks microbloggers – because they get the story

Tameside Council has declined to provide “Twitter accreditation” to bloggers and other citizens – thus supposedly preventing them from reporting via social media from council meetings. It seems the council is much more comfortable with the idea of “professional journalists” covering its activities. Could this be that they are less of a threat? The Daily Telegraph […]

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Andy Davies – the unseen casualty of the Jonathan Ross affair

Lots of meejah chat about the passing of Jonathan Ross from the BBC airwaves this week. Some decry him as “a tacky agent of unthinking self-harm” (Quentin Letts, unsurprisingly); others celebrate a “fresh, irreverent TV natural” (Mark Lawson). But all overlook the collateral damage from his fall. No, I’m not talking about Russell Brand (he […]

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

First iPad-only magazine to launch

If this job ad is to be believed, the “World’s first iPad-only magazine” is set to hit early-adopter screens in September. Katachi claims to be “an international selection of Design, People and Business” and is recruiting for freelance journalists with “a minimum of two years’ experience or genius equivalent.” It’s an intriguing idea. Does this point to […]

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Subbing tip #10: Where’s the question?

Normally, the Radio Times is the most rigorously proofread magazine on the newsstand, so it’s a shame that this bit of sloppiness slipped into print. From Stuart Maconie’s “Maconie’s People” column of 3-9 July 2010 comes this: Forget what they say about James Brown. Damon Albarn is surely the hardest working man in showbiz? Whether […]

Friday, July 9th, 2010

BBC ‘most popular’ glitch – unnamed pages infest BBC news site

Bit of a glitch at the BBC web site this afternoon – either that or the viewing public has developed a fascination with “Unnamed pages”. (Actually, it’s kind of fun – makes visiting the site a bit of a lucky dip… ) UPDATE: Oh, and it’s all over. Everything’s back to normal now. A shame […]

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Why fact-checking should start early

Nine-year-old Anna Carnochan has been in the news today, taking the prime minister to task over a potential tax on toys. She wasn’t happy with his reply, it seems, and is pursuing the matter with the tenacity of a young Jeremy Paxman. Apparently Anna “wants to be a news reporter” when she’s older. She’s currently […]