The Media Blog

Money's too tight to mention? ...or is Mick Hucknall stepping in to save Christmas

I've been a little mean on my local paper The Surrey Comet in the past, but today they won me over completely with a wonderful headline, absolutely dripping in pathos:

 

Wow! Way to make somebody feel special.

Not only was Hucknall second choice to somebody from X-Factor but he was second choice to an X-Factor reject no less...  to turn on the Claygate lights.  

Where's Claygate? Ask Hucknall he's heading there Saturday. Though he may be the only one with a billing like that.

  

Call Deep Thought. I need a computer to tell me the best time to write about Halloween.

There's an interesting post at the Online Journalism Blog about AOL's plans to use user data to prioritise stories and even pay writers. This bit leapt out at me though from the original article:

The system is designed to track breaking news and trends and identify the best times to write about seasonal events, such as Halloween or Monday Night Football.

I'm guessing the best time to write about Halloween is, er, just before Halloween. And Monday Night football? Hmm, a tough one. Maybe Monday? With some match reports on Tuesday morning?

N/A

Johnston Press has started experimenting with paywalls. I'm not convinced it's going to be a success if they don't give some thought to what they call the product ...

Leaving aside whether stories about toilets are the sort of must-have content that will motivate people to subscribe, I'm not sure referring to the Northumberland Gazette as the n/a site is very good branding.

You can see a round up of other paywall selling messages here.

Life begins for The Sun with an Apple parody

Is The Sun aiming for a new demographic with this video to celebrate its 40th birthday?

Top 10 Media Blog posts from the past week

1. The big fight: TechCrunch beats FT to the punch?
2. 'Cheat' Thierry Henry turns to media for helping hand
3. Media poll unearths difference between influence and perception
4. Financial Times "Makes It Up" Shocker
5. Papers love a good employment tribunal story...unless it's one of their own
6. So what can we expect of a Tory digital Britain?
7. Glenn Beck namedrops Polanski as Fox News goes on the offensive
8. Will Daily Mail be 'dyeing for vanity'?
9. Will a single Standard finally reach its audience?
10. Whose fingerprints on 'Hand of Frog' headline?

Will a single Standard finally reach its audience?

The fact the Evening Standard is scrapping its early edition and sticking with a single "West End Final" edition is good news for its sleep-deprived journalists (in the old days they had to file copy by about 7.30am to make the deadline for the first edition).

But might it also be good news for its target audience?

When it announced it was going free, the Standard said it was upping its circulation to cope with an expected increase in demand. So now it's giving away 600,000 free copies instead of selling 250,000 copies at 50p, as it used to.

But as a Londoner who works in the City - not exactly out in the sticks - I've been amazed at how difficult it's been for me to actually get a copy of the paper once I leave the office.

The Standard's distributors start handing out copies from about 4pm. They are pretty much gone by 6pm. In the last two weeks I've noticed that every time I've walked home past Bank tube station (between 6pm and 7pm), there's nobody handing out papers. They've all finished.

So upscale Londoners - the paper's target market - aren't able to get their hands on the paper even if they wanted to. That's a pretty big own-goal and makes me wonder if the paper is reaching the audience the management - and advertisers - expect.

Maybe the single, later edition will mean more papers at peak times - and more left for people like me, commuting home after six o'clock.

Papers love a good employment tribunal story...unless it's one of their own

Roy Greenslade asks a good question in the Guardian:

"..why, I wonder, was The Guardian the only national paper to report on the fact that former News of the World football reporter Matt Driscoll was awarded almost £792,736 for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination by an employment tribunal?"

It's a rhetorical question to a large degree as Greenslade's appraisal of the situation goes on to make some excellent and some obvious points.

Newsworthy

The one fact of which we can be certain though is they didn't duck it on grounds of newsworthiness. How do we know? Well here's a sample of similar stories with far smaller pay-outs than the News of the World's near-£800,000 pay-out that still made it into the now-silent media. In the case of the first story the pay out was a whopping, er, £0. In the case of the second it was a mighty £9,000:

1. Spiritualist sacked by police wins ruling over his faith in psychics The Times

2. Disabled student wins employment tribunal against Abercrombie & Fitch The Telegraph

3. Lesbian soldier sees £190,000 harassment payout cut by a third The Telegraph

4. Gay postman gets £2400 for sex bias The Mirror

5. Muslim wins in £4k scarf row The Sun

You get the picture...

Will Daily Mail be 'dyeing for vanity'?

A Daily Mail journalist has sent a request (via Response Source) for experts to talk about allergies to hair dye.

I’m sure it’s for a very balanced and informative piece about what to do in the unlikely event of hair-dye allergy.

So I imagine the feature won’t look anything like this:

(Disclaimer: This is not a real screenshot. It could be, though, right?)

Media poll unearths difference between influence and perception

I've just read an interesting article on PR Week's website. I was baited into clicking by a Tweet from a staffer on the industry title discussing the most influential media.

"...radio 'most influential' medium" said the business-end of the headline, a red rag to those of us who nailed our colours to the media mast marked 'web' some time ago, but a refreshing antidote to recent Twitterstorms and over-analysis of social media sensations such as United Breaks Guitars, where companies have been given a hard time on the interwebs.

A poll of 1,000 opinion leaders found radio had more influence than any other media on corporate reputation. Television came second and print third, while online languished in fourth place...

"Languished" no less.

Polling company Populus spoke to 1,000 chief executives and other business leaders, permanent secretaries across Whitehall and leaders in media and the public sector.

Now, in common with a great many polls this could be a true reflection of the situation. But, especially considering the demographic polled, I'm more inclined to believe all we've really unearthed here is the perception of a very particular group whose disinclination to the web should come as little surprise to anybody. The article also states:

Among print titles, the Fin�ancial Times (FT) was seen to have the most impact on a company's reputation, followed by The Times and The Daily Telegraph.

You don't say?

The big fight: TechCrunch beats FT to the punch?

Popular tech news site TechCrunch took a swing at the Financial Times today, claiming it scooped a Microsoft / News Corp agreement days before the paper 'revealed' the deal.

"Congratulations to the Financial Times. It’s taken them 10 days and three reporters to confirm our previous story," says the post by TechCrunch's European editor, Mike Butcher. It also adds: "The FT has no other new information that hasn’t been previously reported."

Why is this post particularly interesting? Certainly not because of TechCrunch's baiting of the traditional news outlets and processes. (It does that regularly and seems to thrive on drama - even resulting in its US-based founder saying that he will ignore all news embargoes.)

The key takeaway from this cleverly-written attack is that the deal itself would form the basis of News Corp de-indexing its news articles from Google, making them exclusive to Microsoft's search engine, Bing, as premium content.

This, argues TechCrunch, will see the world of news split into two - 'slow news', churned out by big publishing houses and released at a controlled rate, and sites like its own, which rely on speed. The very deal they are reporting on appears - quite conveniently - to be a prime example of this polarisation already happening.

With the established publishing houses re-evaluating their distribution models and the world of news continuing to accelerate and fragment, TechCrunch is throwing down the gauntlet. While the FT wins on trust, analysis and impartiality against gossipy, unpredictable sites like TechCrunch, the uneasy balance of power might not last for long.

All TechCrunch needs to do is temper that gung-ho approach to journalism to bring it on to the right side of trustworthy. All the traditional news outlets need to do is work out how to deliver content more quickly using a viable online model that doesn't put them out of business...

'Cheat' Thierry Henry turns to media for helping hand

Following last week's much-criticised behaviour in cheating Ireland out of World Cup qualification, Thierry Henry is now embarking on the inevitable media offensive to limit any damage done to his hand... sorry, brand.

Today the BBC carries highlights of an interview Henry conducted with the French media.

Asked, possibly with some priming, whether he had considered retiring following the universal condemnation of his cheating, Henry replied:

"Oh yes. Friday, when it all went too far, I was very worked up."

But fear not basketball fans, Henry isn't going to be hanging up his cross court pass any time soon.

"Despite everything that has just happened and the fact that I felt let down, I will not let my country down."

(Apart from reducing France's very presence in the World Cup to a single moment of cheating, that is.)

It's a textbook "sympathy please" piece, run in the aftermath of a reputation sinking scandal. How many times have we seen: "I thought about suicide reveals reality TV star", "I nearly drank myself to death says disgraced 80s pop star", "My infidelity cost me my friends and family, reveals shamed MP"... you get the picture, and so did Henry's PR team.

Top 10 Media Blog posts from the past week

1. Glenn Beck namedrops Polanski as Fox goes on the offensive
2. Has Belle de Jour revealed little more than a fear of being forgotten?
3. So what can we expect of a Tory digital Britain?
4. The Sun and Mail pull stories about Professor Nutt's son
5. Financial Times "Makes It Up" Shocker
6. Botcha! The Sun's 40th Birthday Splash
7. 'Painful, crippling loss of creativity': Observer on Observer
8. Gotcha! 3am website in keyword-stuffing SEO U-turn
9. BBC subs troubled by their Nether regions
10. How low will the Piers show go?

Whose fingerprints on 'Hand of Frog' headline?

The Daily Star has been dabbling with 'Le Hand That Rocked The World', The Times went with a rather clumsy 'Hand of Gaul' on Friday's front page, but there was only ever really one Thierry Henry / plucky Irish heartbreak headline that was going to catch the mood.

'Hand of Frog' was the clear winner ...er, hands down.

The question is who got there first? I'd stake a claim for Andrew Stewart in Belfast who tweeted this at 10.13pm, within minutes of Wednesday night's goal:

(Hat tip: @dannyrogers2001)

Financial Times "Makes It Up" Shocker

News that Financial Times writer Lucy Kellaway made up a letter to her column will surprise those who regarded the FT as one of the few remaining bastions of journalistic integrity.

Kellaway, the newspaper's popular "Agony Aunt", wrote yesterday about a male reader's problem in which the man complained his wife was having an affair with the chief executive of the company where they both worked.

Certainly this was a juicy topic for the FT's highbrow audience and sparked all sorts of City gossip about who could possibly be involved in the moneyed menage a trois.

However, Kellaway has now herself admitted to fabricating the letter, from "Director, male, 50",  basing it on a real-life love triangle at insurance giant Aviva.

Her justification: "None of the letters are made up out of the blue, entirely. Seventy-five or 80 per cent of the problems are sent in directly by readers.

"The other ones are based loosely on problems that have either happened to my friends or that I know have occurred."

Kellaway's confession makes you wonder exactly who her advice - "The first thing to do is get a good lawyer" - was aimed at. I'd also be fascinated to know the identity of "Anon, male" who proffered these words of wisdom to the imaginary cuckold: "Try to look on the bright side, You have managed to offload her cheaply and efficiently - she can't exactly use the "poverty" argument when agreeing the divorce settlement, so you can get to keep the house, the car and even the dog."

There has long been speculation that Agony Aunt columns aren't all they are cracked up to be and that perhaps a hard-pressed hack or two might have been press-ganged into action to help beef up the content. (This is certainly something I can confirm knowing of at least one ill-qualified columnist who regularly fabricated reader letters to spice up the normal post bag of tired offerings from the likes of "Depressed of Doncaster" and "Obese of Ormskirk.")

However, to think that the FT of all publications is also prepared to engage in such tabloid tactics is certainly an eye-opener. What next, dear Lucy? A Page Three stunner in the Companies & Markets section?

Glenn Beck namedrops Polanski as Fox News goes on the offensive (and the offensive goes on Fox News)

Fox News could never be accused of subtlety. In fact, it wears its right-of-centre heart on its sleeve, across its chest, in a large graphic behind the newscaster and scrolling across the screen. Just in case you miss the point – and you wouldn't if you were a patriot – the newscasters are there to sledgehammer their message into your nut-like cranium.

Glenn Beck, one of the ace faces on the channel, got particularly carried away this week with his effort to picture patriots squashed under the socialist boot of government. Uttering the kind of simile that would have you asking for your coat and speed dialling a taxi if you dropped it into polite conversation, Beck declared:

"We're the young girl saying 'no, no help me' and the government is Roman Polanski"

Beck has been leading the charge against plans to reform healthcare. Fox News and its followers want to keep the current healthcare schemes in place, with less government interference, even though the current Medicare and Medicaid schemes are also federally administered.

In a desperate push to have the bill defeated the news channel has been promoting anti-healthcare rallies around the country. Some of these were well attended, though perhaps not as well attended as Fox News would have liked, leading the channel to reuse old footage to exaggerate the number of people attending.

Unfortunately the Daily Show's Jon Stewart spotted the duplication, which was picked up in the UK by political blog Liberal Conspiracy, causing Fox's Sean Hannity to issue an apology.

The healthcare rallies saw President Obama compared to Hitler, but the Polanski gaffe signals a new low. Fox News may be asked to apologise again, and rightly so. Beck and his channel have the platform to spark healthy debate on the healthcare, yet they only choose to make sick remarks.  

Neil Willis is a former freelancer with experience in the charity and consumer sectors, business to business publishing and national newspapers. He now works for an international news digest