Probably from the Sport (well, it was a couple of decades ago and my memory’s going), and probably nicked from the National Enquirer anyway:
You’ll be missed. Well, a bit…
Quote of the day, from Wired’s profile of Demand Media:
“You can take something that is thought of as a creative process and turn it into a manufacturing process.”
Byron Reese, chief innovation officer, Demand Media
The scariest thing is that the Wired article is already two years old…
Cross-posted from UCA Journalism News, here’s a video of Bristol-based social media editor Chris Street speaking to UCA Farnham online journalism students on the power of social in journalism and the skills you need to succeed online, compared to traditional print journalism. (Hint: there is no real difference at all).
Be versatile
A social media editor has to wear many hats
“On Sunday, I was the leading female plastic surgeon in Birmingham; three days before that I was an Italian hair salon in Bristol; tomorrow I’m going to be a leading imagery and map solution provider in Cheddar.”
Don’t forget to mention how glamorous it is as a career, Chris…
Engage your audience
How social media makes journalism more responsive to readers
Journalism skills
Why traditional newsroom skills are vital for social media too
Journalism skills are very transferable: as journalists, you have skills and experience and a way of thinking that is essential if you’re working online.
Remember: the most valuable communication skill is listening.
News = people
Never mind the tech – it’s still all about relationships
“The platforms are changing so rapidly, there’s no such thing as a guru or an expert”
The key is to be really passionate about social media as an editor.
Bringing out the story
How journalism skills are vital to give life to content
Tony Blair, UK House of Commons – March 13, 2003:
This is the time for this house, not just this government or indeed this prime minister, but for this house to give a lead, to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing.
David Cameron, House of Commons – March 18, 2011:
We simply can not stand back and let a dictator whose people have rejected him, kill his people indiscriminately. […] The choice we have made is to play our part in joint international action to enforce international law: to uphold the will of the United Nations Security Council; to respond to the calls from Arab countries and the Arab League; and to do the right thing for the people of Libya who want greater freedoms, and above all for the UK’s own national interest.
Found on the free magazine rack in Morrisons in Bath – an example of how the magazine industry is fighting back against the slew of sub-standard free online content. Basically, by producing a slew of sub-standard free printed content.
At first glance, Retired – & living in Swindon looks as if it is produced by someone who is retired and living in Swindon – probably from their spare room. But it’s actually one of an improbable number of local variants from Bolton-based Retired Magazine (39 bi-annual editions according to the web site, plus event specials).
Yes – a striking cover featuring the nation’s most glamorous pensioner, Jane Asher (64). And this, at least, seems to be a real feature based on a real interview. But the rest of it is a hodge-podge of PR puffery, second-hand extracts from a celebrity book and company-generated advertorial.
Worse, it looks like a dog’s dinner – nothing’s lined up to a grid and the typography is a mess that seems to be based entirely on the standard free fonts that come with your computer.
The sad thing is that this is the kind of magazine that would probably have been produced by some real editorial staff 15 years ago. Now, it’s thrown together by someone with seemingly no editorial production ability at all. Yet it must make money – this variant is up to its 15th edition, and others are much older.
Print just won’t lie down and die, it seems – even when perhaps it should…
[NB: if you are worried about missing out on a copy, subscribe! Just £3.40 to cover P&P will get you a year’s worth of issues (2), delivered straight to your door!]
In response to the containment breach at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a predictable flurry of panicky “safety” measures elsewhere. According to the Metro:
Tests will be carried out on Britain’s nuclear plants as part of a safety crackdown in the wake of the radioactivity leak in earthquake-hit Japan
Because, of course, a nuclear disaster caused by an enormous earthquake in a geologically unstable part of the world has immediately raised the risks of a disaster here. We must be shown to act quickly and decisively to ensure the safety of our own population from an earthquake-induced nuclear breach.
Ah – no. Here’s Greenpeace, making the key point:
It is important for Europeans to realise that you don’t need a big earthquake to cause a nuclear catastrophe
Uh – actually, it looks like you really do need to have a big earthquake to cause a nuclear disaster. Without the earthquake, the nuclear plant in Japan would have quite happily chugged along, producing electricity and not blowing up. In all likelihood.
This is just knee-jerk safety theatre – if our nuclear plants were not especially dangerous before, they’re not especially dangerous now. EU energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger is quoted as saying “There are high European safety standards already.” Well – then we don’t need this crowd-pleasing – but probably pointless – series of tests.
And if we do need them – then logically our standards aren’t high enough. So what would have happened if Japan’s earthquake hadn’t hit? Do we only create safety standards in reaction to catastrophic natural events?
This is all nonsense – and the media should call it to account.
Heard this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme: John Humphrys expressing the magnitude of this morning’s Tokyo earthquake as a percentage – “8.9%”.
The Richter earthquake scale is a base-10 logarithmic scale (ie, it has no unit as such, and each unitary value greater than the one before is actually 10 times more powerful). So 9.0 on the Richter scale is 10 times more powerful than 8.0.
It’s not a percentage – or anything else. Scale fail.
The Metro seems to think we’ve got another Iraq on our hands as the US and the UK prepare an invasion of Libya to liberate Libyan oil the Libyan people from a dictator that the West has been trying to make friends with recently.
No, wait. This is what is happening:
The prime minister and the president agreed to press forward with planning, including at Nato, on the full spectrum of possible responses, including surveillance, humanitarian assistance, enforcement of the arms embargo, and a no-fly zone.
That’s actually not quite the same thing. If they “agree to oust Gaddafi”, that means they “agree they will get rid of him. By whatever means necessary.”
Actually they are agreeing to try to help the Libyans themselves oust Gaddafi – you know, if they can sort out a response. Which may include a no-fly zone. Or not.
This is actually the high-level strategic military planning that’s happening here. David Cameron:
“I had a phone call with President Obama this afternoon.”
Not quite the same impact on a two-deck headline, though…
You wouldn’t see this produced by the British Medical Journal. From 1935 comes “The Digest” – “An Annual Magazine for circulation amongst Medical Graduates and Students.”
Doctors, eh? The tone is set by the ever-so modern lady on the front cover, whose state of slightly risqué déshabille can only be justified by her subtle indication of what must be an area of discomfort around her sternum (more anguished than languishing, perhaps, though you might be forgiven at first for mistaking her pose as one of erotic abandon).
Then, in among the worthy-and-dull articles on “The medical army in warfare” by Colonel F. T. Bowerbank and modernist medical poetry about post mortems, comes “The Man Midwife”, with its highly symbolic illustration of a naked woman embraced by a surgeon and the skeleton of death.
Tellingly, the journal is “published under the auspices of the Medical Students’ Association, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand” – this was back before New Zealand was a global backpacker destination, of course.
If only I had thought to use this approach during my time on Manufacturing Engineer magazine…
Today’s European Court of Justice ruling that insurance companies may not charge differential rates to men and women has hit the headlines. The ruling will probably mean that women will now have to pay more for their car insurance (and possibly men pay less – though insurers will be more likely to hike premiums than reduce them).
But no mention in the media of the obvious next development in this. If discrimination by gender is to be illegal, then surely any other discrimination will be illegal too. Like age.
Women are charged lower insurance premiums because they are safer drivers. But older, and thus more experienced, drivers are also safer than boy racers.
Age discrimination is now banned in the workplace. It’s a safe bet that any discrimination ruling by the ECJ will be extended to age at some point, so older drivers will no longer be able to get discounted rates.
What will this all mean? Either that insurance companies begin to charge the same premium for everyone, regardless of risk (so more expensive for the cautious, maybe cheaper for the careless). Or possibly that insurance companies will price insurance contracts solely on individual driving record. As a comment on BBC News suggested this evening, that might make premiums more expensive anyway, as they will be more work to process.
As the price of oil spikes thanks to Middle East unrest, drivers can look forward to relentlessly rising costs. Terrific news.