
You can see more of Matt Buck's Hack cartoons here.
Related:
- The Sun Shines On DC. So Wot?
- Why Moleskine Is The Model For Newspaper Survival
- The Sun, Katie Price And Political Delusions
- The Future Of Newspapers, It’s In The Bag
« August 2009 | Main | October 2009 »

Jon Bernstein at 12:49 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Jon Bernstein
is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former
multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and
editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 10:56 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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"Get big, get niche or get out" is a hoary old business mantra. For a news media in an increasingly fragmented landscape the middle option seems the obvious one.
Niche publications will be able to survive offline and charge on it. Or so conventional wisdom has it.
When we talk of niche we tend to talk in terms of subjects (business, pharmaceuticals, model railways etc) and not objects.
But what if the desired niche was physical? What if there's an audience out there who crave the aesthetic of the printed newspaper as much as Moleskine owners crave their little black and bound notebooks?
The Moleskine is a useful analogy for two reasons. Firstly, it is very tribal - the owner, likely urban, liberal and creative*, is saying something about themselves. If you feel alienated as a non-owner, a non-member, well you're supposed to.
Second, the Moleskine should have been made redundant by the PDA and the smartphone - its portability and functionality both superceded by a digital alternative.
It didn't because people crave the physicality. There are now 10 million Moleskine notebooks in production each year.
Newspapers, too, are both tribal and threatened by a digital alternative. Could a few carve out a niche as highly desirable, daily objects of desire?
(*No surprise then that many in the tribe were horrified when Fox News anchor Glenn Beck, poster-boy of the American right, was spotted with one.)
Related:
- The Future Of Newspapers, It’s In The Bag
Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 13:26 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Nadia Saint at 11:18 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Ever since Andrew Marr put the medication question to Gordon Brown yesterday, the media has turned the spotlight on the political blogosphere.
Was Marr guilty of indulging in some web-based tittle-tattle, on the BBC no less? Had he fallen for another right-wing conspiracy in cyberspace? Or was the question of the PM's state of mind a legitimate area for discussion?
Opinions are naturally divided - Charlie Beckett at Polis and Benedict Brogan writing on his Telegraph blog provide some of the more insightful analysis.
Meanwhile, the hunt was on for the blogger that had originally put the idea of the PM-on-pills into the public domain.
Some mistakenly thought it all started with Guido Fawkes, but the UK's most renowned political blogger soon put them right.
The author of the original was in fact John Ward who blogs at Not Born Yesterday.
Earlier today, Ward told Channel 4 News:
The fact of the matter is I still have no more proof, and I stress proof, than anyone else that Gordon Brown is actually taking anti-depressants.
All I can say is that I was given a verbal list of foods he allegedly cannot have by a very senior civil servant at a social gathering. And as an occasional depressive myself in the past I recognised the contraindications immediately from many years ago to be those of an anti-depressant of the MAOI type that I have taken.
So no proof and a Downing Street denial, but an educated guess backed up by a verbal tip off from a "very senior civil servant". It's probably enough to legitimise it as a story out in the blogosphere.
But at the post-Gilligan BBC? I'm not so sure.
Related:Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 16:45 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Jon Bernstein at 15:10 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Nadia Saint at 12:59 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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"Ok, can you do some more probing? New York will want to know," is an odd way to start a story about Roman Polanski's arrest in Switzerland. The inverted pyramid it is not.
Turns out that the Associated Press - syndicater to the stars - inadvertently pushed out an internal memo rather than the news story.
You can read it here - in all its glory.
It features such gems as:
they particularly want to know why now. (has he never set foot in switzerland before?) sheila, theorizes that's because they're under intense pressure over ubs and want to throw the U.S. a bone, but can yo ucheck with justice department sources there?
I think Sheila might be on to something.
It's a "there for the grace of god go I" moment for most journalists. And in some cases a "there went I" moment.
Back in the mid-1990s I worked on a weekly tech paper where we had place holders for various pieces of page furniture.
The place holder for the top-of-the-page strap read "Strappy Something". The pulled quote holder read: "Pull quote to go here to liven up an otherwise deadly dull page".
Sure enough, both went out unchanged one particularly fraught press night.
Related:
- One Of The Best Photo Captions Ever
- Google Ads. FAIL
Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 11:34 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Will Sturgeon at 09:36 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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1. Why UK newspapers miss the Beijing Bump
2. "Keep fucking that chicken" becomes web sensation
3. Is this the ultimate Daily Mail headline?
4. Daily Mail readers give in to their greatest hate...
5. The Telegraph's journey to cutting edge new media
6. Spotted Dick’s revenge: when made-up stories get real
7. Gill breaks obit code, flambés Floyd
8. Spoke too soon: The Daily Mail wheelie hates cyclists
9. Can ASA pull the plug on blog's blatant advertorial?
10. Daily Mail’s cycle ire gets tyre-ing
See also:
Top 10 Media Blog posts from the past week - 21 September
Top 10 Media Blog posts from the past week - 13 September
Top 10 Media Blog posts from the past week - 6 September
Top 10 Media Blog posts from the past week- 31 August
Will Sturgeon at 01:07 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Save for June's blip, news site traffic has been largely at a standstill since the New Year.According to their own analysis, Mail Online, Guardian.co.uk, Telegraph.co.uk, Sun Online, Times Online, Mirror Group and Independent.co.uk combined only have 469,517 more users now than they did in January.
Perhaps a traffic standstill is coming with the plateauing of broadband take-up?
Could this be online newspapers' "dirty little secret", they ask. In a month, we should know.
Related:
- Why UK Newspapers Miss The Beijing Bump
Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 12:52 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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We’ve started following the Daily Mail’s current campaign against cyclists… so why stop. Today the Mail barks:
Now it's speed bumps for cyclists… to stop them rampaging down a road
No comments have been submitted yet. But I think we know what’s coming.
Perhaps the subtlest irony is that the none-too-inspiring picture used to illustrate the story (right) features wheelie bins; another two-wheeled menace and subject of the Daily Mail’s previous hate campaign that it was embarrassingly forced to drop after it left readers cold.
The cycling issue has proven to be far more inflammatory and so will run and run, as will out cycling puns.
Will Sturgeon at 17:13 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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A brief glance at the graph below shows alarming commonality among the performance of UK newspapers online - decline.
The people at Journalism.co.uk collate the Audit Bureau of Circulation's monthly ABCe traffic data to offer this useful trend line.
One plausible explanation is that audiences always fall during August when much of the country disappears on holiday at some point in the month. It manifests itself in a number of ways in print - trade publications often drop an issue or two while hard news gives way to the silly season inside the nationals.
But I'm not sure the silly season effect has ever been fully proven online. Anecdotally, all the web titles I've been involved in have seen traffic hold up well over the summer.
Unfortunately, a direct comparison with 2008 doesn't shed much light.
Thirteen months ago most digital papers were enjoying a Beijing bump. The Olympic Games - coupled with a war in Georgia that made the season anything but silly - were at the heart of some pretty impressive month-to-month increases.
Most notable were the Guardian (unique users up 12%) and the Telegraph (up 18% and through the 20 million barrier for the first time). Intriguingly, the Mail Online - the clear king of the web in 2009 - suffered a 7% decline.
No such worry a year on, especially with headlines like this.
Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 16:46 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The headline below doesn't come from one of those Daily Mail headline random generators. Rather it featured in the real paper earlier this week.The online version, meanwhile, is true to the print original down to the upcapped "HAVE" .
It's such a perfect example of its form that it is causing waves on the other side of the Atlantic. Cory Doctrow of the crazily popular Boing Boing (tagline: A Directory of Wonderful Things) is responsible for the rather blurry image below.
Related:
- The Express Fiddles While The Mail Earns
- One Of The Best Photo Captions Ever
- Daily Mail Ends Moderation. Will Anybody Notice?
Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 13:11 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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The 'us' in the question above is journalists and, by extension, consumers of journalism.
And the answer - despite an apparently busted business model and significant job losses - is, actually, quite a lot.
In my latest column for Journalism.co.uk, I suggest that the web has reinvented the form, that news journalism is in one of its most creative periods ever.
And I propose five innovations that would not have been possible without the internet. In no particular order they are:
1. Interactive infographics
2. Crowdsourcing
3. The podcast
4. Over-by-over commentaries (yes, really)
5. The blog
I'm pretty sure that's not the end of the list, so help me write the next five.
You can read the full article here: Five innovations in news journalism, thanks to the web
(Picture credit: noneck)
Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 16:44 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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A couple of weeks ago, a Daily Mail story got commenters all sweaty-palmed over Spotted Dick. Implying a local council had banned the ‘offensive’ phrase, it invited a woefully predictable chorus of ‘PC’ complaints. Except – and as I argued at the time – it wasn’t actually true.
It was such a Mail cliché that Richard Littlejohn’s byline was the only glaring omission. But sure enough, Littlejohn guffawed at his Spotted namesake just a few days later. (And as Richard means Dick which means dick, and Richard in rhyming slang is shit, I’ll let some other people point out this sweet irony.)
So all in all, it was a non-story about some catering staff changing the name of Spotted Dick, likely bored of incessant and unfunny 'dick' jokes. Nothing to do with council policy, nothing to do with political correctness, and certainly nothing of national interest. But now?
According to the BBC:
Council chiefs have reversed a decision to rename the pudding Spotted Dick after receiving "abusive letters" and accusations of political correctness.
Who’s betting that some of these letters were a direct result of the Mail article, complaining about something that wasn’t real? It’s a fairly stark example of a non-story becoming a real story, and having a real-life effect – even if it is only pudding.
Nadia Saint at 16:20 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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Like our constitution, the media code for dealing with the recently departed is unwritten but it can be simply put - if you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
With the possible exception of dealing with serial killers and despots, it is a convention tightly observed.
Sometimes it's easy to be nice - nobody appears to have a bad word to say about Sir Bobby Robson, as Matt Dickinson noted in the Times yesterday.
On other occassions it's more troublesome.
Take Jade Goody, who was treated with derision by the papers for much of her public life. Nevertheless, the period either side of her passing was like a tabloid love-in.
With all that in mind, let me take you to AA Gill's television column in The Sunday Times.
Gill goes on to acknowledge that Keith Floyd "changed the way food and cookery were presented on the screen". But not before these two opening paragraphs:
Tonight Keith Floyd sleeps with the fishes. I can’t in all honesty say that I’ll miss him. I was once sent to interview Keith in the south of Spain, where he’d retired: one of his many retirements, all hurt and self-pityish, to escape from the ravages of unions, socialists, philistines, do-gooders, traffic wardens, political correctness, immigrants, critics and sober bores who had apparently taken over Great Britain, the country he loved except for everything it did and everyone in it.
I found him in one of those sorry expat Costa del Sol pubs at 10.30am, necking pints, leaning on a bar with half a dozen hacking, pasty-faced, nicotine-fingered taxi drivers and nightclub bouncers, flicking through The Sun while complaining about the football and the price of Marmite. Four hours later I left him slumped and insensible in an armchair, his sweet young wife apologising with a well-practised, half-hearted boredom as she tried to get him off the soft furnishings before his bladder gave up.
Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 12:26 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Following last week’s invective against anybody who owns a bicycle, the Daily Mail has clearly decided cycling – or rather its abolition - will be its new cause-celebre. We'll be saddled with this subject for a while then as the paper pedals it's unique brand of... ok, I'll stop with the cycling puns.
Writing today, Robert Hardman offers up an incoherent rant against cycling in which he also criticises arguments which are “either naive or deliberately misleading”. And so the irony begins:
…er, no they didn’t.
…er, no he didn’t. Darnton said he would like to see measures such as a “legal onus placed on motorists when there are accidents; speed limits reduced to 20mph on suburban and residential roads; cycling taught to all schoolchildren; and cycling provision included in major planning applications”, but he will doubtless be aware of the need to draw a line in the sand and then begin ceding ground – such is the nature of negotiation. Fortunately the horse-trading that goes on when drafting new laws and legislation doesn’t begin and end with the Daily Mail’s point of view being universally accepted. Hence we have a multicultural society.
Almost in the same breath Hardman has raised the issues of taxpayers’ money being wasted; while apparently criticising the government for hiring somebody because his CV suggests he’s well-qualified for the position.
…exactly. So your point was what?
Will Sturgeon at 16:51 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Conrad Quilty-Harper, an investigative journalism MA student, contacted The Media Blog to say he’d written to the Advertising Standards Authority asking for its take on the practice of using a blog to so shamelessly – and tangentially - plug products (click to read more).
By his own admission he expected personal blogs to be in no way covered by the remit of the ASA.
But somebody from the ASA apparently replied, stating: “I have spoken to Zoe Griffin’s agent. He has given his assurance that any future reference to Voltz on the website will make clear it is an advertisement.”
It raises some questions:
1) Why does Griffin have an agent?
2) Can the ASA really make any such recommendations or requests of somebody’s personal blog, or any blog for that matter?
3) Why is a cool refreshing pint of Guinness still the best way to unwind after a busy day?*
It appears it may the shallow pretence of ‘editorial’ that has caused the problem here for Griffin.
(*OK, we added that one as a joke... and in no way at the request of Guinness)
Will Sturgeon at 13:07 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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You may recall a survey here on The Media Blog last month which found that few UK consumers would be willing to pay for content they can currently access for free.
At the time the survey of 1,000 Media Blog readers was criticised in some quarters for being self-selective, a not unreasonable charge even if other criticisms didn't quite hit the mark.
Interesting to see, then, that an oh, so kosher paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll broadly reflects the earlier findings. Asked what they would do if their favourite news site starts charging:
An overwhelming 75 per cent of consumers said they do not believe any of the three UK News International newspapers produce the kind of content which cannot easily be found elsewhere.
Hearts and minds, Rupert. Hearts and minds.
Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.
He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com
Jon Bernstein at 12:16 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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