Entries from May 2011

Saturday, May 28th, 2011

Kate Middleton’s Reiss dress – more opportunistic economic illiteracy by the Daily Mail

How we love the Daily Mail. Today’s shock news is that the must-have high-street frock that the Duchess of Cambridge wore this week to meet that nice American couple Mr and Mrs Obama was made “in a Romanian ‘sweatshop’ by women on just 99p an hour.” That’s terrible! The royals are exploiting the poorest of […]

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

Niall Ferguson: digital communication is not an agent of freedom and democracy

Rock star contrarian historian Niall Ferguson took his Civilisation: The West and The Rest world tour to the genteel folk of Bath this evening at the excellent Topping & Company book shop. The small but enthusiastic audience of largely white, largely middle aged and relentlessly middle class Bath folk seemed strangely unperturbed by his grim predictions […]

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

Will the iPad be the saviour of journalism? Maybe – but it could be a bitter tablet to swallow

Could the iPad be the saviour of journalism? Maybe – but only if we are able to swallow some unpalatable truths. Nielsen’s been doing some interesting research on digital tablet users (iPads and the like). Apparently they are more valuable than users on other devices, including smartphones and PCs. They like (or tolerate) advertising more, […]

Saturday, May 21st, 2011

Weekend video: how online content providers make our choices for us – without us knowing

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a slightly disturbing TED Talk by liberal US political activist Eli Pariser. He’s worried about how the big online players are automatically filtering the content we see according to what they think are our preferences – without our knowledge or consent. Most telling are the examples that show how […]

Thursday, May 19th, 2011

Newspaper web sites! Why have one clickthrough when 10 will do?

Spotted on the Telegraph web site – an increasingly desperate attempt to get users to click on more pages. Is there any particular reason to turn a simple statistics-backed list items – “Top 10 jobs graduates want” – into a picture story? especially a picture story that requires you to click 10 times to get to […]

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

Tales from the trade press: publicity-shy tobacco suppliers

It’s funny how the idea that all publicity is good publicity sometimes doesn’t filter through to the people you’re writing about in business features. My latest thrilling trade press feature is about the tobacco industry. Yes, I know – I’m evil for even taking that brief. Hey, my dog has to eat. So what sort of […]

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

Weekend video: Saving American Journalism. With subsidies…

“Americans are hungry for news” – apparently. So some people think the US government should subsidise it to the tune of $30 billion a year. Here’s a fascinating documentary from PBS (sort of the US BBC) that talks with po-faced solemnity about the importance of the fourth estate…

Friday, May 13th, 2011

Friday PR placement: war zone journalism

Following the recent debate over bribes for bloggers, I offer a recent and unmediated arrival in my inbox from the lovely Gemma at Fido PR: I have attached information about a new exhibition about journalism in war zones that I thought would be of interest for your blog. Imperial War Museum North in Manchester is […]

Friday, May 13th, 2011

Friday infographic: the death of print

Via Get Satisfaction comes this nice graphic of the relentless decline of print media. Well, when was the last time you bought a newspaper?  

Thursday, May 12th, 2011

Twitpic: the price of free online services

Apparently Twitter users are cross because Twitter-friendly image upload service Twitpic has changed its terms to allow it to sell on users’ uploaded images for a profit. Yes – it’s annoying. And yes, it flies in the face of what copyright law intends. But, you know, that’s what happens when we get used to the […]