The Media Blog

Daily Mail vs BBC - now on ITV

Apart from this clip, Dancing on Ice is a bit of a LOL-free zone. However, shows like this do tend to attract strange reactions from media outlets and their readers.

In particular, this comment from a confused Sean in Wales proves nothing puts a Mail reader off a licence-fee gripe - even if the show in question is aired on, erm, ITV:


   

Why the big pause...?

It's been a bad week for Scunthorpe MP Elliot Morley who was already having a pretty bad year. Out of a job after the next election, embroiled in the scandal over MPs' expenses and now facing criminal charges for his alleged abuses of tax payers' money.

Makes you wonder what more's got to happen to bring to an end one of the longest pregnant pauses on Twitter:

...and that was 14 May, 2009.
 

'Tears for Piers' and Campbell cries foul of media treatment

According to today's papers, it was a case of tears for Piers when Gordon Brown agreed to an interview with former newspaper editor turned reality TV show panellist Piers Morgan. Cynics may suggest the emotional interview, to screen next weekend on ITV, is Brown's latest attempt to win some sympathy among UK voters. Perhaps a case of Alastair Campbell sowing the seeds of love for his beleaguered Prime Minister?

So where was Labour's spin-doctor-in-chief as these stories were leaking out in the media?

Well he was over on the Andrew Marr show, also in tears, this time over the Iraq enquiry and an emotional defence of former boss Tony Blair.

"Tony Blair, I think is a totally honourable man," said Campbell, not only with a straight face but actually with tears welling in his eyes.

Campbell then went on to suggest the media's intense scrutiny of Blair and his administration's grounds for invading Iraq was putting a strain on his emotions. He said the media is "settling scores" and "setting [its] own agenda".

Clearly the massed ranks of the UK media missed the memo stating they should observe only the agenda of Campbell and his employers. How very dare they persist in questioning the validity of claims which sent a country to war.

It's a mad world.

Top 10 Media Blog posts from the past week

1. And now over to the news, with Charlie Brooker

2. Does Andy Murray really win 'British' but lose 'Scottish'?

3. Tag clouds say the funniest things...

4. Market dominance - a walkover for niche media?

5. A word of caution about the iPad

6. Love it or hate it, MyDavidCameron is a media hit

7. A Tory nail in the local media coffin?

8. Was John Terry's faith in super-injunctions his biggest mistake?

9. ITV: 91% of people think Adam Crozier is overpaid

10. Friday Fun: Could robots do a journalist's job...?

The London Weekly - not funny, just sad

The London Weekly's launch will probably go down in media history as one of the most bungled efforts ever. The paper itself was smuggled out with a minimal publicity campaign and, on the basis of issue one, you can begin to understand why.

A design that looks like it comes from Microsoft Word and would shame even a school newspaper, let alone a university rag; typos galore (including on the front page); and a bizarre sense of what actually makes news (the lead story is a re-hash of a press release from Wasps' rugby club). These aren't exactly good things for a newspaper, especially if you're a newcomer trying to survive in the worst newspaper climate in publishing history.

It might help if The London Weekly employed more recognisable journalists amongst its staff. The track record of those involved at launch - like its backers and their financing - remains rather shadowy.

So is this all just an inspired hoax to work up London's media land into a tizzy? Judged by reaction on Twitter and blogs, it's working so far. But as a parody of how bad local or free papers can be, it isn't as funny as the Framley Examiner - it's just sad.

Child intern "terminated" over bribery allegations

Many readers may not be familiar with technology blog Techcrunch but in the world it occupies it's a pretty big fish in a pretty big pond. And late yesterday TechCrunch lifted the lid on the case of an intern who had allegedly been requesting kick-backs for coverage on its influential pages and the blog's editor has published an apology to its readers...

"...this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup. After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post. The intern in question has admitted to some of the allegations, and has denied others... When it became clear yesterday that there was no question that this person had requested, and in one case taken, compensation for a post, the intern was terminated."

"Terminated" no less. Now that is zero tollerance.

Other things we learn from this apology include the fact the intern was not a legal adult. The site's editor adds:

"We are all shaken here at TechCrunch..."

Alright, alright ...so they definitely did the right thing - and I applaud the decision to 'fess up publicly... but does anybody else think the apology is a bit much? Corruption, alleged or otherwise, among journalists is most definitely 'a cardinal sin', but not literally in the same way murder is.

Indefinite loan

While the UK is more relaxed about this issue than our US cousins, surely any journalist, anywhere, would be lying if they said they haven't accepted something of even neglibible value from somebody who wanted their time and ultimately their kind words - a drink, a meal, a hospitality invite, an unsolicited gift, an indefinite loan of an expensive gadget "for review purposes".

Most trust themselves not to be consciously swayed by such kindnesses of course.

This intern's unforgivable mistake was that he explicitly laid out the quid pro quo, it is alleged. He named his price and made it clear his decision process would be swayed. As such they had to sack him because he risked the reputation of the title.

But was the real mistake here TechCrunch hiring him to do a job he may not have had either the savvy or the integrity to do? That would explain the tone of the apology. TechCrunch doesn't say how he was supervised.

I don't doubt the editor who gave him an internship and a foot on the ladder did it with the best intentions but is this really just a warning to other editors about cutting corners and scaling back on quality control?

Audit Commission comms MD all at sea?

Not a publication often to be found on the pages of The Media Blog, but the Local Government Chronicle gives an interesting (if disturbing) insight into modern media trends.

 

The LSE's Tony Travers writes a balanced overview piece on last week's Sunday Times article on accusations of political partiality at the Audit Commission. In summary, he finds that the story ultimately stemmed, "from a series of mistakes, not political bias."

 

You might think the Audit Commission would take this as a welcome glimmer of sunshine amid the media storm. You might also think that the Commission's MD of Communications, ex-Guardian Journalist David Walker, might choose to respond by sending a carefully drafted communication (following consultation with Chief Executive and Chairman), thanking Tony for his insights, reinforcing the positives and gently putting across alternative conclusions for the few negatives.

 

Wrong on both counts. Mr Walker has decided that the best way to respond to this online article is to leave... a comment in the box at the bottom. Like so many before him, he also succumbs to the curse of the comments box — the web Troll.

 

His opening gambit is to pull Mr Travers up on his use of grammar (classic Troll behaviour). He then builds upon this misplaced pedantry by picking apart one of the few articles in a very long time that gives his organisation the benefit of the doubt. It’s a bit like abandoning your life raft in a hurricane because you don’t like its particular shade of hi-vis orange.

 

This exposes the void between journalism and comms. As a poacher (journalist), Mr Walker was paid for his opinion; as a gamekeeper (government Comms MD), he’s paid to keep it to himself. The views he expresses, and objectives he pursues, must be corporate and not individual.

 

If Mr Walker's vision of government comms triumphs, however, then we should brace ourselves for major policy announcements ending with "Sent from Gordon’s iPhone - LOL".

Friday Fun: Could robots do a journalist's job...?

Is this the future of the media? Given a set of strict editorial guidelines could robots do the job of Fleet Street's finest... or would some decisions still not compute? (Thanks to Xtranormal.com ...remember it's just a bit of fun):

Market dominance - a walkover for niche media?

Being a big fish in a small media pond has its appeal. But some ponds are so small I doubt they'd ever support more than one fish.

Take the market for 'doormat media'.

No, really. The doormat market. I bring you news of the hottest media launch this side of Project Canvas.

You'll find it at onlydoormats.co.uk. Launching in February 2010 - so not long to wait - UK PRs are implored to include them on mailing lists. In case the URL didn't give the game away, only doormats describes itself on its single-page website as a "niche, destination site focusing exclusively on doormats". So that's clear then.

Unsure if your product fits? Don't worry. "Coir doormats, cast-iron door mats and also contemporary, designer doormats" all have a home at onlydoormats.co.uk. Phew.

Wind up? You tell me. But if I had a doormat-manufacturing client, I'd mark this down as a red letter day - and they must be few and far between.

I'm off to work on my business plan for Simply Doorknobs...

Beckham's bunions - if you prick us, do we not bleed?

So, in a world where democracies tolerate Guantanamo Bay, Britain is at war, and multitudes suffer from fire, famine and earthquake, the big news yesterday was that Victoria Beckham has bunions.

Yes, bunions.

I'm astonished, flabbergasted and frankly horrified. Next you’ll be telling me that if a celebrity falls over and cuts their knee, their blood will coagulate where it is exposed to oxygen, causing a scab to form, beneath which the skin will repair itself. Ughh!

A Tory nail in the local media coffin?

As if local media didn’t have enough to worry about, it appears the Tories have another arrow aimed at its collective heart.

Anyone living in rural Britain will be jumping for joy to hear that 'super-fast broadband' is less than two Parliaments away (or by 2017, for anyone who doesn't already have an eye on re-election). And that's great, assuming there'll be stuff on the web worth looking at. Including things that matter to people living away from our metropolitan hubs - like local news, for instance.

It doesn't take more than a quick glance at the nation's balance sheet to see that there's not a lot of cash sloshing around for this egalitarian advance. Instead, the Tories have taken their knives to the BBC licence fee - a favourite target that just happens to be securely funded.

Problem is, using this 'top sliced' licence fee makes a grab for the same cash earmarked to give Independently Funded News Consortia a leg up. These are the ITV news replacements which, in Ofcom's own words, "[are] capable of delivering a news service to meet the demands of audiences, potentially to a more local level and across the full range of platforms".

Which kinda puts the web at their core, no?

Welcome to the Tory view of the information superhighway. They'll get you from A-to-B at lightning speed (maybe), but based on this, I wouldn't bank on there being much to look at when you get there.

So just what do the Tories have up their sleeves for local media? Jeremy Hunt used a platform at last week's Oxford Media Convention to promise a "radically different, improved and forward-looking local media sector". Sounds great. But robbing the cash that was already in the bag for something similar, simply to reinvent it with a Conservative flavour, won't please many.

Are they setting out 'broadband-for-all' as a digital election battleground? Is it that much of a vote-winner?

For a party that seems to value local democracy so highly, they seem awfully scared of a robust local media.

Was John Terry's faith in super-injunctions his biggest mistake?

Anybody following the UK media will be well aware of the John Terry / Wayne Bridge story (picture, right, links through to the Times' latest coverage).

It's good tabloid fodder and the fact Terry is - at the time of writing - England captain perhaps elevates it above 'yet another scandal involving yet another footballer'. But even still the level and the tone of the coverage, including widespread calls for Terry to be stripped of awards and responsibilities, seems disproportionate. And it's hard not to draw the conclusion he brought this upon himself, not through the alleged indiscretions in his personal life but because of his readiness to engage the lawyers. In so doing he was effectively baiting, even threatening, a dangerous animal with a misplaced faith that the protective bars between them would hold.

In the end, he just made an already hungry animal angry: 

- The delay simply gave news desks more time to track down statements, dig up old photos of the two players together and really sharpen their knives for the moment they could push the big red button on Terry's reputation and career - after he tried to hamper theirs

- Much as any editor loves an exclusive - and the News of The World has still staked its claim on this story well - the press is never more effective than when it goes hunting as a pack and Terry provided time and motivation for them to do so 

- Most importantly, the attempted application of UK privacy laws clearly got Fleet Street backs up and positively invited a bloodbath of negative coverage

If Terry had not used such a heavy weapon against the media, I can only assume so many journalists wouldn't have come out fighting to the degree they have. Now they are going after him, his career and his sponsors. Trying to run him out of town.

The story will clearly now run and run, because the papers have had a whole week to plot their story arc, and the battlelines are being drawn. John Terry has hired Phil Hall, former editor of the News of the World, to handle his PR while the ubiquitous 'other woman' Vanessa Perroncel, the former partner of Wayne Bridge, has appointed Max Clifford.

A word of caution about the iPad

I have some doubts about the iPad. I apologise for adding to the already vast coverage, but bear with me. You may, at the very least, be able to poke fun at me when it turns out to be the epoch-changing device Apple's marketing people say it is.

I wanted a few days to think about it beyond the default "Ooh, it's a new gizmo from Apple" angle adopted by many supposedly serious commentators. The most obvious question is "would I buy one?" Almost certainly not. As a working journalist, I need something which has sufficient poke to run stuff such as Adobe Creative Suite, do some video editing and podcast recording, build websites, run a blog, plus all the usual word processing and spreadsheet malarkey. All preferably on a decent sized screen. 

For this, a MacBook or an iMac are the minimum requirements. What the iPad offers doesn't really do it for me. Especially as I have an iPhone. So between my MacBook and my iPhone, I've got what I want as a working journalist.

Of course, the iPad isn't aimed primarily at professional users. Apple wants to bring in a whole new market, like it did with the iPod and iPhone. But how attractive will the iPad be to the general user? This is an important question for the media industry, as it affects how what we produce will be consumed. And again, I'm not convinced the iPad is a particularly attractive option. 

Dom Joly

There's no phone, of course. Including one would not only bring back memories of the Dom Joly character with the enormous brick mobile, it would further drain the battery life of the iPad. But it's pretty safe to assume a general user would want their portable electronic device to be useable as a phone. How many people are going to buy an expensive smartphone AND an iPad? 

While we're on the subject of battery life, just how genuinely portable are all the iPad's functions going to be? Using 3G on an iPhone currently results in a visible draining of the battery power indicator, and even without 3G on I have to recharge mine at least once a day. I'm not a particularly heavy web browser via my phone, but still the iPhone's battery life compares very badly to most mobiles I've had.

Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tom Kaneshegi voices some concern about the battery life, and about how this and Apple's choice of screen may adversely affect the potential eBook market.

There's no camera or webcam either - both key to mass market appeal. And there's no support for multitasking. Plus there's the flash question. The fact that it is not supported was one of the major talking points after Steve Jobs presented the device. Some said this was an error but, as MacUser magazine points out, Jobs rarely makes 'mistakes' and this seems to be a conscious decision. What that means for now is that about two thirds of web video and gaming content will not be available to iPad users. 

While that criticism could be countered by pointing out that it comes from within the Flash development industry, and it may well be the case that Flash dies out – especially with outfits such as YouTube transitioning their videos to the new open standard HTML 5 – the fact remains that iPad early adopters will miss out on a vast chunk of what's currently available.

It would be foolish to write off the potential influence of the iPad. Having used Apple products for over 20 years, I know how they can change the way we do things. But I just can't put my finger on what anyone would buy a portable electronic non-phone non-camera with limited access to available web content and poor battery life for. It looks supercool, and the potential for gaming is pretty impressive. But that's potential. Right now, a good smartphone, laptop computer or desktop computer seems a far better option for consumers and media professionals.

Tag clouds say the funniest things...

A lot of people always ask me 'Will, what sports do you reckon the Telegraph writes about the most?'

'Good question', I respond, 'I would imagine it's probably football, or maybe Ultimate Fighting Championship.'

And it seems I'd be right to question my first guess, judging by the tag cloud on the Telegraph's blogs (right). But of course this is just the blogs and we all know the Telegraph's online following likes nothing more than a bit of no-holds barred bloodsport.

However, some people of a more traditional mindset may be surprised to hear UFC so dominates sports more closely associated with the Telegraph's traditional readership; rugby, cricket, horseracing - the latter of which isn't represented at all among the Telegraph's blogs (consider this my application if you're reading over at Telegraph Towers.)

Cynics may suggest it's a shameless SEO-driven attempt to indiscriminantly court click-happy readers from non-traditional demographics and territories (the lucrative US teen market perhaps). Nothing wrong with that of course, though most-written-about doesn't mean most-read. Others may say the apparent disconnect between content and core audience is a potential downside of the bloggers' self-selection of beat areas and one which is exacerbated when niche bloggers write far more prolifically than those covering traditional hot topics. 

I wouldn't dare criticise however. They can't be that keen on fighting without picking up a trick or two.

Does Andy Murray really win 'British' but lose 'Scottish'?

It's long been said that 'Andy Murray wins British and loses Scottish' in the fickle eyes of a predominantly London-based UK media, willing to cash in on his victories but quick to send "him homeward, to think again" when he is beaten.

Some of the reasoning here is understandble. The media must reflect and tap into the public's own conflicting feelings towards Murray. They must reflect the hunger among tennis fans for some British success in a sport where our notable achievements rank as few and far between as those of Kenyan skiers and Dutch mountaineers (probably).

But, like many in their target audience, most media outlets have struggled to warm to a man who appears to possess few of the qualities that elevate an able sportsman to a popular icon. Murray's outspoken dislike of the English probably didn't help his cause (though increased endorsements seem to have brought some back-pedaling in the media on that point), but even on court, where he undeniably does what he does well, it's hard to shake the notion his opponent may be the better man. 

"Scot"

But now to the numbers. If we look at the past week, as Murray ascended to the final - or at least closed in on widely anticipated defeat at the hands of Federer - the UK media reported on Andy Murray predominantly as a "Scot" a grand total of 1,290 times. Meanwhile he was reported as being predominantly a "Brit" just 96 times, according to Google News.

However, the count for "Scottish" versus "British" appearing in the articles, but not necessarily directly describing his nationality, is an overwhelming 93 versus 2,038, suggesting perhaps a careful and convenient balancing act was in place; making clear it is definitely a "Scot" who carried the hopes of "British" tennis.

We are still left guessing how all this might change if Murray ever wins a tournament of note, but until then, Murray much like his rackets, appears to be being held very much at arm's length.