The Media Blog

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.

And now over to the news, with Charlie Brooker

ITV: 91% of people think Adam Crozier is overpaid

Post Office boss Adam Crozier is to be the new CEO of ITV. 

But what has ITV itself said about Crozier in the past? This is my favourite piece on the ITV website - revealing that 9 out of 10 people think he was overpaid at the Post Office ...

TV’s TONIGHT programme reveals the public sector bosses who earn more than the Prime Minister and reporter Jonathan Maitland presents the “WONGAS” to Britain’s highest paid public servants...

The figures show the chief executive of Royal Mail, Adam Crozier, was the second highest paid public sector worker after he earned £995,000...

A survey conducted by YouGov for the Tonight programme, which airs on ITV1 on Monday 2nd November at 8pm, revealed the British public believe that some public sector salaries are too high ...

The survey was conducted by asking a representative sample of 2042 people to assess the pay of ten of the leading bosses in the public sector. Respondents were told what the bodies they are running do, and then asked to consider how much they were paid. They were asked if they thought they earned too much, too little or the right amount...

91% thought Adam Crozier earned too much.

Personally, I'm too busy making jokes about how ITV will transmit all programmes during working hours and you'll have to take time off work to collect the ones you want to watch. Or that even if you know you were in front of your TV, you'll get a card saying ITV tried to transmit the programme but your TV was off.

But I wonder what he's on now he's moved to ITV ... Does he have to give back the WONGA?

Gossip hacks: We can't even spell skitzorfrenick

You can't have missed the big news yesterday... that's right, "the fairytale between 3am and Peter Andre is over for good". "For good!" no less after the popular tabloid figure put his foot down about how the press would be writing about him, including a clause in a written contract that no photos or any mention of ex-wife Jordan could accompany a puff piece about him turning up for a promo slot in a Costa coffee shop (he gets all the big gigs).

It seems Andre's inability to jettison the baggage - so to speak - of his failed marriage is, understandably, something of a sore point.

(Quick catch-up for the unitiated: 3am, and its spin off 3am.co.uk, where this story appeared - is the Mirror's celebrity gossip brand and Peter Andre had a couple of chart hits back in the nineties. Now he is more famous for marrying and then acrimoniously divorcing an orange-hued, surgically 'enhanced' glamour model called Jordan who confusingly also goes by the name of 'Katie'. Together they were an unwitting sociological experiment in just how far it is possible to go with very little discernible talent, fuelled only by the inane fascination of hacks writing things like, well, the Mirror's 3am pages.) 

But then in the spirit of our enemy's enemy is our friend, 3am reports that Jordan is quite literally "pissing herself" over the whole debacle, citing a 'source' (which you may presume is tabloid speak for 'we just made this bit up', I know I did). 3am wrote:

"...it's good to know we can rely on someone to have a sense of humour over this. Perhaps now that we're bosom buddies, Katie would like to meet up for a gossip some time?"

Maybe. And while discussing the goings-on at Davos, or relief missions to Haiti, Jordan may pause to bring up this story from the Mirror today:

"Jordan was yesterday named the most hated woman in Britain. Jordan, real name Katie Price, topped the survey after bad-mouthing husband Peter Andre during their bitter split last year..."

Top 10 Media Blog posts of the week

1. Sun subs: Take a bow...

2. Why journos are in luurrve with Apple's iPad-thingy

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

4. Has the guardian of common sense gone on holiday?

5. Why 2010 should already be a great year for subs

6. Aftershock hits Haiti, Facebook OK, Twitter unaccounted for

7. Clegg's Twitter launch is nothing of the sort

8. If your name's down you're not coming in... apparently

9. Politico proves print still has its place

10. Rod Liddle denies racist posts were his

BBC World and the "Anti-Islamic hos"

I believe the technical term is "sex workers". 

(From @bbcworld.) 

 

 

Why journos are in luurrve with Apple's iPad-thingy

Let's pretend for a minute that Apple isn't a company with just five per cent of the global mobile phone market and a similar share of the home PC market, and let's pretend the fact they're probably about to launch a hybrid tablet PC/Kindle-type gadget which we may or may not really want is big news.

That would certainly make it a lot easier to care about the vast amounts of coverage the story is getting in the media. The Telegraph is boasting that it has the only journo from a UK national attending the launch (is this true? We demand to know!).

Benjamin Cohen over at Channel 4 asks 'is this the end of laptops' - probably not - while Rory Cellan-Jones has got his high-tech knickers in a right old twist rushing from studio to studio at BBC Centre telling the world - or the out of work who are still watching Breakfast News at 8:10am, but unlikely to invest in expensive gadgets any time soon - about this story. Or rather what the story probably is. He's barely had time to Tweet about it.

Yesterday's Independent, you may not have seen, even had a great big supplement all about how bloody marvellous Apple gadgets are.

But why?

Well on one level it's because 'Apple rocks, dude, they're super-mega awesomeness and their kit is, like, so whack' - as any self-respecting fan-boy will tell you - but also it has much to do in this instance with who's writing the story rather than who is interested in it. If you go back to those percentages of Apple's market share and then look instead only at the UK media industry and its wider ecosystem (PR types, designers, advertising, marketing etc...) you'll find those reasonably unspectacular market shares suddenly disproportionately larger.

For the Mac-typing, iPhone-chatting, iPod-listening, style-conscious, trend-following 30-something (give or take) the movements of Apple are important and this does look like a bigger story. So damn it, they're going to write about.

Furthermore the story is also being talked up by a media that enjoys writing about the media as the next important step in the future of publishing. Could Steve Jobs be about to single-handedly save the media? Probably not, but at least he's given them something to talk about for a couple of days.

It all reminds me of this outstanding spoof from The Onion. Watch and enjoy:  

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Seeking "quirky" story of abuse. LOL.

People who wish to share their experiences of abuse in the workplace should crave both accuracy and sensitivity in the ensuing story. But the opening line of this journalist request is unlikely to allay their fears on that score:

This is a really quirky one and may just be a case of 'if you know someone'.

Trying to find a former teacher who left the profession because she... was assaulted by a pupil...

I'm assuming the journalist means quirky as in peculiar, but still. What next? A lighthearted tale of domestic abuse? A wacky exposé of redundancy? LOL!     

Politico proves print still has its place

 Politico.com is the ultimate insider's website - beltway politics for obsessive followers of the American form.

In a fascinating Vanity Fair profile (yes, I know, it's been around for a while) Michael Wolff said of the website's founders:

Their radical idea was not to flatten or break open this most insular of towns but in effect to make it more parochial and self-obsessed.

More interesting is what followed. Stellar success during the 2008 presidential campaign, when monthly uniques hit 11 million, has been followed by sustained digital success and the subsequent launch of a print version.

And guess what? Print has been a vital ingredient in helping Politico become a going concern:

Internet cachet, in other words, has enabled a tabloid-size print version of Politico (also called Politico) to thrive and more than double the company’s revenues—which, just about evenly split between Internet and newspaper, will, it appears, be more than $15 million in 2009—meaning, according to C.E.O. Fred Ryan, that Politico, paying its staffers at nearly the level that The Washington Post pays (starting salaries for reporters at the Postare about $45,000 per year), has hit breakeven.

Further proof that the dead tree narrative is just too simplistic.

 

Jon Bernstein is the deputy editor of the New Statesman - and an occasional contributor to The Media Blog.

 

 

Did police abuse right to stop and search photographers?

Last year, in the London Borough of Westminster alone the Metropolitan Police stopped and searched more than 100,000 people under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, citing their right to do so without genuine cause or suspicion.

That is the finding of a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by The Media Blog.

During the first nine months of 2009 the Metropolitan Police stopped 99,307 under Section 44, equating to 20.8% of all stops in Westminster.  

Among those stopped were a great many photographers, stopped and interrogated for doing nothing more than their job - a situation which sparked a flurry of angry reactions last year, following some high-profile abuses by the police, and accusations the police were deliberately trying to make life as difficult as possible for the media.

But despite the police's apparent belief that photography is a trademark behaviour of would-be terrorists, The Media Blog also found the Met subsequently keeps no record of whether photography was even a factor in stops, raising further questions about the real motivation for such stops.  

This weekend more than one thousand photographers are expected in Trafalgar Square to protest agains these police abuses at a demo arranged by campaign group I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist.

Last week the European Court of Human Rights ruled the police's over-zealous abuses of Section 44 were illegal.

Has the guardian of common sense gone on holiday?

The Guardian seems to be able to do the impossible. Steer reasonably clear of scandal, grow its online readership, support new technology, make news blogs interesting, and get people to actually pay for an iPhone app.

So why has it gone all Daily Express today and tried to warn me that my sofa is out to kill me?

The article itself is a summary of an important new study into toxic additives found in everyday things. And very informative and balanced it is too. It even contains the word 'perfluorooctane', without prefixing it with 'killer chemical' or 'death substance' like other papers might.

So I'm telling myself that the headline - and associated pic of a corpse on a sofa - was written by a sub on work experience, perhaps covering someone's holiday, and that everything will be OK again soon.

Daily Mail fuels CBB's "Z-list" PR machine

The Daily Mail reports:

'Celebrity Big Brother rejects Katia and Lady Sov are now falling over themselves to get into the papers'

...And they were pretty successful, too - on the Mail Online, at least. But there's very little point calling out publicity-seeking "Z-list" nobodies and their predictable drunken behaviour whilst:

1. Writing about them;
2. Printing pictures of them (c/o Big Pictures, naturally); and
3. Ending with: The rapper was dropped by record labels Def Jam and Island at the end of the 2008 and now runs her own independent outlet entitled Midget Records. She is currently working on her third album, due to be released later this year.

Pretty comprehensive coverage – despite the snarky tone.

Love it or hate it, MyDavidCameron is a media hit

You would have to have been up a mountain or down a very deep hole this past week to have missed the web sensation that is MyDavidCameron.com - a website given over to heavily doctored parodies of the Conservative party leader's own 'airbrushed' billboards.

If you didn't spot the URL spreading like wildfire on Twitter, you'll almost certainly have caught it in The Mirror or The Telegraph or The Daily Mail or The Times or The Standard or, well you get the picture.

It would appear the media love this story for a number of reasons:

- Politics has just got (marginally more) interesting and has rediscovered some wit and biting satire albeit an unexpected gift from the world of user generated content

- It gives them something to say, as depending on political allegiance they can either praise the return of grassroots political satire or bemoan the childishness / nastiness of the whole thing

- It's a very visual story and they can fill swathes of white space with cut and paste images, without credit or royalty

- Old Tories and New Labour can all agree that PR man David Cameron's misplaced faith in style over substance has come back to bite him on the proverbial - and what journalist doesn't like a bit of 'I told you so' every now and again? (Though let's not forget some commentators were quite glowing about the original launch of Cameron's poster campaign).

But could there yet be a sting in the tail? Could the Tory grassroots turn the guns back on Labour leader Gordon Brown?

It seems unlikely given a rich history of Tory wits that begins and ends for many with Jim Davidson, but that hasn't stopped one enterprising young Conservative blogger registering MyGordonBrown.co.uk (because MyGordonBrown.com was already pre-emptively registered by the MyDavidCameron.com lot... the scamps!).

We wait in anticipation for Round 2.

If your name's down you're not coming in... apparently

Breaking news over at the Telegraph:

Workers with the names Andy and Sarah are most likely to ring in sick... a survey has disclosed. Other male workers who were likely to fake an illness included Steve...Paul ... John... and Dave... The poll of 5,000 workers and employers found name of female employees exposed "desk-dodgers" including Becky, Anne, Emma and Debbie.

Putting aside the fact the third sentence reads like somebody has just sneezed those words onto the page, this is interesting stuff. What are the chances that the people with the most common first names in the UK would also be likeliest to throw a sickie? 

Next week the Telegraph will reveal that shark attacks on swimmers are directly linked to an increase in ice cream sales.

Clegg's Twitter launch is nothing of the sort

According to page 11 of this morning's print edition of the Guardian, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg today eschews "the typical podium and press conference setup favoured by politicians".

Instead, he is launching his party's new policy for the young and out-of-work direct to his 6,892 Twitter followers, his 3,084 Facebook fans and a seemingly defunct Lib Dem YouTube channel.

The piece then goes on to outline the policy announcement in some detail:

A 90-day promise that would see young people claiming jobseeker's allowance for more than three months helped into training, a job or an internship. If they did not have any luck with these three, they would be fast-tracked on to a welfare-to-work programme, the flexible new deal.

But, of course, this is no digitally-inspired launch. This is classic press relations. The national press are suckers for stories about Twitter as they once were for tales of eBay and FriendsReunited. The Lib Dem press people know this very well and will be delighted by the secondary coverage guaranteed by five column inches in the Guardian.

A Twitter and Facebook campaign may generate a debate -- that's what social media can do when used well -- but it's a fair bet that most people know about this latest tweet-fest thanks to old media.

Jon Bernstein is the deputy editor of the New Statesman- and an occasional contributor to The Media Blog. This post originally appeared on The Staggers.

 

Social media news: Aftershock hits Haiti, Facebook OK, Twitter unaccounted for

Don't get me wrong, we get it, we love it, we're there, we've bought the T-shirt, but can the world of social media sometimes be its own worst enemy, scuppering its credibility with too little self-awareness and too much shallow introspection?

Just asking.

This from social media news site Mashable (I'm sure the final paragraph is as comforting to the people of Haiti as all the Twibbons people have added to their Twitter profiles):

Sun subs: Take a bow...

Hats off to the subs over in Wapping who have had a great day today.

Knock off early and buy yourselves a beer on us.

As if 'The Bourneville Ultimatum' wasn't enough headline gold for one day, they also offered us 'Plunge Bob Tear Pants' on a story about a bobsledder splitting their trousers and exposing their backside.

And then... today's 'News in Briefs'  (See Amy, 21, from Sheffield, above) is also an outstanding example of its kind.

In fact, I maintain the 'News in Briefs' box remains, almost without exception, the best piece of writing to be found anywhere in the Sun on any given day.

The very best 'News in Briefs', like a great joke, hinge on a moment where the set up is blown apart by the punchline, in this case the quote. A moment where the plausible becomes the impossible. Enjoy.

Rod Liddle denies racist posts were his

Interesting piece by Greenslade in the Guardian (following a story in the Mail this weekend), reporting that Rod Liddle - tipped to be the next editor of the Independent - has once again had to deny the use of racist language.

In December, Liddle claimed comments he made about black people being predominantly responsible for a wide range of violent crimes and repaying society only through "rap music" and "goat curry" were being twisted by those accusing him of being a racist.

This time, according to Greenslade, Liddle claims his log-in details* for an online messageboard for Millwall fans were stolen and used to post controversial comments on issues such as the intelligence of black people:

"On average a little under 10 per cent thicker than whites; 15 per cent thicker than east Asians."

Another post bemoaned the lack of smoking areas in Auschwitz, but Liddle told the Mail:

"I often get opposition fans logging in under my name to try to embarrass me. I wouldn't go near the racist ones..."

He should probably change his log-in details.

(*According to the Guardian's report, Millwall fan Liddle used the word "millwall" as his password. Alan Turing he ain't.)

Why 2010 should already be a great year for subs

Following hot on the heels of a cheating 59-year-old wife, called Mrs Robinson, comes this headline fodder from the drawer marked 'Seriously? These things just write themselves.'

Kebab yob defended in court by his mum, named Donna

Clearly the Mirror's subs knew there was a great headline there but haven't quite nailed it with their air of 'would you believe it!' incredulity. As further details emerge (was she a small Donna or large Donna for example?) we'll wait to see if anybody comes up with anything better - though feel free to submit your own suggestion below as a comment.

(Hat tip to James Warnette)