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 […]

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

Sky recycles four-year-old press release for latest Royal Wedding story

Sky seems to be desperate to run anything about the Royal Wedding at the moment – hence this slightly ungracious pop at the economics of the couple’s big day: Extra Bank Holiday to cost Britain billions. As many retailers benefit from a Royal Wedding consumer spending spree, it is claimed the extra bank holiday will cost […]

Monday, February 28th, 2011

Cashback for Interns: what are workies really worth? A parable of economics

There’s quite a heated exchange going on over at FleetStreetBlues on the NUJ’s Cashback for Interns campaign here, here and here. I think we all need to go and clear our heads. Let’s go for a nice walk in the country. Let’s pretend it’s August. I don’t know about you, but I fancy a few […]

Monday, December 6th, 2010

The power of infographics: 200 years of progress

Here’s a fascinating example of animated infographics. It’s a powerful visual representation in a few minutes of a complex and controversial story – the idea that, contrary to much of the media’s narrative about life in the modern world, things have gone quite well, all in all. Uncovering, understanding and representing data such as this […]

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

One journalism job that won’t have many applicants from journalists

Spotted on Journalism.co.uk, a journalism job ad for a blogger/opinion former to cover the foreign exchange markets. “Great,” think the mass of underemployed hacks scouring the classifieds. “I could turn my hand to that. Let’s see, what does it need? Hmm – ‘Must have a genuine interest in financial markets’. Well, I don’t know much […]

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Missing the point about e-books

Woman in Black author Susan Hill spectacularly misses the point about e-books in this piece from the Spectator. On the way, she does make some insightful observations about the way that bookshops are facing up to the threat posed by internet sales and digital distribution. In fact, small, independent bookshops may be better placed to […]

Friday, November 6th, 2009

FT: pink paper turns red?

Iain Martin of the Wall Street Journal has written an interesting series of posts fisking the Financial Times. Essentially he argues that the FT – which is typically perceived as a bastion of the pro-capitalist media, and also has a reputation for quality coverage – is biased and sloppy. One post discusses an FT story […]

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Journalism: a suicide note

I’ve just read Build the Wall – a gently impassioned, 4,250 word essay in the Columbia Journalism Review by David Simon – that declares the only future for journalism is if newspapers – all newspapers, everywhere (in the US anyway) – start charging for their online content. It’s billed as “One man’s bold blueprint”. It’s actually […]

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Yahoo: the perils of economic statistics

Not sure what state the UK economy is in? Better not read the papers and newswires today, then – you’ll only get more confused. Today saw the release of the UK’s second quarter GDP statistics. Hmm. How bad were they? “Bad”, says Yahoo Finance, which takes its content from  news service AFP. British economy sees […]

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Comments Unbound

For everyone who can’t get through the day without new and shiny material to look at, be reassured that there’s a lot going on here, but most of it is in the comments section, where readers and I are engaged in the savage cut and thrust of debate on matters ranging from why paid journalism […]