When someone comes under attack for something or other, many journalists pull out the old anti-aircraft metaphor to describe it. But here, sadly, their ignorance starts to show. “Flak” comes from a German acronym for anti aircraft fire – Fl(ieger)a(bwehr)k(anone). A “flack” is a slightly derogatory North American term for a publicity agent. So ditch […]
I snarked a bit recently about the recent redesign of the Online Journalism Blog – I thought it made the site less usable and seem less full. It seems my campaign has been vindicated – the OJB has reverted to its former design (or at least something like it), which, while not perfect (and what […]
You have to love newspapers’ obsession with social media. Whether it’s the Twittering of Stephen Fry et al or the latest security breach involving Facebook, the news media are all over it – irrespective of whether their readers know the difference between a Tweet and a twat. This latest example from the Metro pushes a […]
OK, I’m really stretching the parallels between newspapers and comic books. But if you really want journalism to be saved, offer something that Disney would like to pay good money for…
The technology to make video is so widely available now that anyone in publishing can be asked to work in the medium. But though it’s easy to work the kit, it’s not so easy to make professional looking results. As ever, the devil is in the detail. Here’s a quick link to a really good […]
Need a job in the media? It seems Facebook is the place to go, as founder Mark Zuckerberg aims to double the company’s headcount to 2,000. Of course, you’ll need to be an engineer or programmer, rather than, say, a journalist, which is the problem when advertising deserts its traditional media home for that new-fangled […]
My first reaction on seeing this Guardian media headline – “Literacy level of recruits now a major concern for media, report finds” – was: I know – I’ve said it myself often enough. But then I read the story. The story says absolutely nothing about general literacy. It makes the following points: The industry needs more […]
Being as I’ve been too busy checking, unchecking and then rechecking tick boxes on a CMS for the past few weeks, I’ve only just caught up with the redesign of Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog. The OJB is excellent as a resource, but it used to look dreadful – tiny type, an unattractive colour scheme […]
Following his recent comments on Freelance Unbound, Martin Cloake has a nice post here on the changing dynamics of magazine publishing. His thesis (roughly) is that saturation in the market forced down individual title readerships, while a fixation on keeping advertisers happy made magazines so bland that this readership deserted the sector in droves. It’s […]
There’s quite a bit of activity in the comment threads again today, as we wrestle with issues such as why newspapers (and TV) are struggling in the internet age. Martin Cloake makes some interesting points about the women’s mass market sector, which he says relies on cheap production, high sales and relatively few advertisements to make […]