The Media Blog

The tabloid guide to Rooney's injury

The merest hint of a potentially minor injury for Wayne Rooney last night will still have sent Fleet Street headline writers and picture editors into a flat spin. Here we review some of the tabloid conventions we may expect to see employed around such news:

1) The headline: A dramatic white out of black with a heavy emphasis on rhyme. Expect that rhyming pattern to be pushed precisely one word too far in an attempt to allude to a previous and almost entirely unrelated injury that did however mean Rooney missed some other important football matches once:

2) The 'We told you so' graphic: Used over the course of several days to a) fill space, and b) remind you they broke a story you actually saw break two days earlier on television. Note however the gratuitous attention to detail in magnifying the injured area and the slightly weak, nonsensical headline that in the cold light of day even they have realised was written in a bit of a rush. If you could zoom in you would also notice that among some pretty vague guesswork, certain key details were way wide of the mark in the first edition (click to enlarge...go on): 

3) A totally pointless picture of an X-ray: It's probably not even anything to do with Rooney and on closer inspection will likely be the wrong foot altogether but let's not let that stand in the way of a visual staple of such stories:

4) The pseudo science bit: A pretty unspectacular diagram which, even with the bulk of the space given over to an image will still run out of steam early in its failed attempt to look convincingly scientific, as the combined minds of the subs desk draw on what limited knowledge they have of key components within the diagram:

What's that you say... he's probably going to be OK?
   

Media bosses count more passengers than parachutes in economy

No sooner had a leaked memo from Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger put the boot into recently-acquired rival The Independent (I say acquired...) than the newspaper revealed new adverts aimed to do the very same. 

The paper announced: Guardian ads poke fun at new Independent ownership ...though it's probably our job as receivers of these adverts to decide whether they're actually fun or not.

I'm still thinking.

And while I do, there was more media in-fighting to mull over today with the BBC's Kevin Marsh, former editor of the Today programme, hitting out at claims by newspapers keen to erect paywalls that there is actually anything worth paying for:

Of all the arguments in favour of newspaper paywalls, one is utter tosh. It is that we - the readers - must pay online to preserve what one tabloid editor once called "the best newspapers in the world"... One thing we absolutely, certainly, assuredly don't have here in the UK is the best newspapers in the world. Full stop.

If we did, a quarter of those who used to buy them wouldn't have stopped doing so over the past 20 years - a desertion that long predates the web, incidentally. If we did, our press wouldn't be one of the least trusted institutions in the land and our newspaper journalists the least trusted in the world. We wouldn't have journalists sent to prison for hacking into mobile-phone mailboxes. Nor editors fired for printing fake photographs or "setting the agenda" while, by their own admission, still drunk from the night before, or admitting that they pay policemen to breach their public trust and give information to journalists...

Websites such as Tabloid Watch would have nothing to watch: they'd not be able to point to astonishing examples of poor journalism, like this or this or this or this. We might have less of a warped obsession with celebrity.

Come on Kevin, don't hold back, say what you really think.

Of course verbal blows have always been traded in the media world but is the temperature being turned up a notch?

Students of the advertising industry may think they noticed during the recession a discernible increase in competitive messaging as companies fought more urgently over scraps. No longer was it enough to talk up your own company, you also needed to talk down your rivals more than ever. Now it seems in the media world, as its own challenges bite and fears threaten to become reality, the major protagonists are starting to look around and realise there are more passengers than parachutes on this particular flight and any sense of bonhommie and civility - or even grudging toleration - is rapidly disintergrating.

And I, for one, can't help thinking the media industry will be a far more interesting place for it.

'Leaked' Guardian memo: Rusbridger comes out fighting

Anybody who believes this memo from Alan Rusbridger was intended for 'internal purposes only' is surely kidding themselves. Nobody gets as high up the newspaper industry ladder as Rusbridger without knowing how effective a 'strictly confidential', 'internal memo' can be in getting key messages to wider audiences. And in this case the key messages include a no-holds-barred treatise on the relative health of key rivals:

...The Times managed to report with a straight face that [Guardian chief exec] Carolyn [McCall] was leaving a company "in turmoil." This is the paper which, together with The Sunday Times, has just declared losses of more than £87m; which has scrapped its G2 equivalent; slashed its news run and has a staff deeply divided over Murdoch's gamble on pay walls. The Times's print circulation is falling at exactly the same rate as the Guardian's – but the Times's web traffic is down seven per cent year on year while the Guardian's rose by 22 per cent.

That doesn't make it a paper "in turmoil." But it does give you a realistic measure by which to judge how newspapers in our market are performing in the face of recession and digital disruption.

...The Independent – in the week in which the owners had to pay an ex-KGB Russian oligarch £9m to take it off their hands – showed a similar lack of self-awareness. The paper which started the "format wars" with the expectation of catapulting over its rivals, now sells just 90,000 copies a day at full price... and has never made any secret about not really believing in the internet.

The Indie has struggled on pretty amazingly over the years – in the face of precisely the same forces bearing down on us all. Can that pot recognize a kettle when it sees one?

Strong stuff. Guido Fawkes has got the whole thing.

Why #AskTheChancellors left me cold

Channel 4's Ask The Chancellors - or #AskTheChancellors to give it its proper name - last night was a first tilt at bringing a little US-style televised debate to the General Election process.

And the consensus seems to be: it wasn't a half bad attempt; Vince Cable performed best on the night; George Osborne managed not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and Alistair Darling displayed an air of confidence that suggested the memo about clearing their desks hasn't reached Labour HQ just yet.

For many though the real interest appears to be in the level of social media engagement the event attracted. Charlie Beckett, director of Polis, was on the Today show this morning discussing Twitter's role in the whole three-ring circus. He's also blogged about it: 

"...the real winner was the internet. This was the biggest live political social media event ever seen in the UK. Alongside the TV show was a Facebook page, online voting and comment on the Channel 4 website and the Twitter #askthechancellors debate thread."

And what did all of this online activity and polling tell us? What did we learn from the one-third, one-third, one-third, split across the voting that barely shifted - only marginally in Vince Cable's favour -throughout the evening? We learned that Twitter is largely the preserve of the middle-class, liberal, politically engaged minority spread across a mainstream political right-to-left spectrum of almost unprecedented narrowness.

And we knew that already, right?

This is my problem with declaring the whole thing a success, just because it fitted in with the narrow view of how a minority of us want to see the cogs of democracy turn. It worked well as a multimedia love-in for people already engaged in the political process and locked-in to intransigent opinions. Everybody could show their team colours, boo the bad guys and then at the end of it all proclaim their guy the winner.

But the most insightful comment I saw on Twitter all evening was perhaps this from @DominicFarrell:

Those who will decide the #election were watching Coronation Street

Perhaps the debate should have been held in the Rovers Return after all, or in the Queen Vic with soap stars channelling our questions. It may sound preposterous to anybody reading this, but no more preposterous than how our social media round trip all the way back to square one will have looked to other sections of the electorate who may now feel further disenfranchised the more we revel in social media's role in all of this. 

Of course, adding lots of layers of multimedia interactivity for those of us who get excited about such things doesn't actively detract from the baseline experience of the television broadcast and shouldn't be dismissed. It may even draw in a few stragglers who like the media more than the message and the subsequent coverage may inspire a few analogue politicos to embrace these new channels.

But looking at that broadcast in isolation for those who don't want the Twitter and Facebook bolt-on experience or the live online polling, I saw little in the Question Time-lite format to get pulses racing.

The Daily Mail Song ...and the nine other best-read MediaBlog posts this week

1. The Daily Mail Song (right)

2. And what did you say your name was...?

3. Why the 'Facebook gives you syphilis' story was so abhorrent

4. How to trick greedy MPs...

5. Sophie Dahl may have her knockers...

6. Spot the difference: Daily Mail goes retro

7. Sun shocker: Facebook gives you... er...syphilis

8. Roger Boyes: Weblebrity

9. Dude! She's, like, 15

10. Gimmick to win it? Telegraph goes crowdsourcing for election hot topics

The Daily Mail song

 

A moment of media zen, courtesy of Dan & Dan.

Channel 4 Raging: Audience deserted in Dubai cry foul

Channel 4 may regret having made any kind of fuss about securing the rights to the Dubai World Cup - a $20m horse race staged at the Emirate's new state-of-the-art Meydan racecourse. The channel dedicated much of its Morning Line programme to the world's richest race and a special programme was shoe-horned into the usual Saturday schedule (repeats of Come Dine With Me followed by even more repeats of Come Dine With Me) so UK viewers could watch the race live.

Cue a 5-minute delay to the start of the race, a drawn-out decision over the photo-finish and Channel 4 having to cut to - you guessed it - a repeat of Come Dine With Me - before the result could even be announced.

Dubai World Cup

It seems it doesn't matter if you're the world's richest horse race, when it comes to Channel 4's schedule, nothing, but nothing gets in the way of the world's cheapest cookery programme.

Or perhaps, after more than 30 minutes without the Channel's flagship programme somebody in the Channel 4 control room just got an itchy trigger finger and had to hit the big red button marked "Come Dine..."

Either way, viewers were less than impressed and on their way online to find the result from more reliable outlets, many stopped to share their thoughts on Twitter:

"What a shambles Channel 4 showing Dubai World Cup and not waiting for the result of the photo finish! Come Dine With Me repeat instead," wrote one poster on Twitter.

"Channel 4 you c**ts never should be allowed racing again EVER," offered another, a little less eloquently.

And profanity was on display elsewhere: "Channel 4's coverage of the Dubai World Cup was a fucking disgraceful."

In fact there was something of a theme developing: "Dubai world cup. Biggest flat race in the world. Channel 4 goes off air before they annouce the photo finish. For Come Dine... TWATS"

Safe to say they weren't impressed.

Metro makum a mistakus

Interesting story from The Metro:

Yeah, that is well embarrassing. As is leaving loads of Latin dummy text in your article.

(Hat tip to @drewb)
  

Roger Boyes: Weblebrity

Well, well - look what's just become the best-read story on the Times website today?

If you're wondering why - as it doesn't look a real click-fest on first glance - a rather unfortunate headline/by-line combination is causing something of a stir on Twitter and making a weblebrity out of author Roger Boyes.

The rich irony in all of this of course is that this is the very kind of serendipitous spike in traffic that the Times is soon to lock out of its paywall - announced today, though it's hard to make a case for this being quality traffic. 

Future of UK media up for grabs at the Pound Store

So The Times they are a chargin' - £1 for a day's access. Meanwhile The Independent has been sold to Alexander 'The Spy Who Loved Media' Lebedev for the princely sum of, you guessed it, £1.

I'm put in mind of the popular High Street prank where you pester the staff in a Poundstore asking...

"What about this... how much is this?
"It's a pound sir, everything's a pound."
"What even these...?"
"Yes."
"And these, how much are these?"

But the fact The Independent is valued at the same amount as a day's access to The Times tells us - if we didn't already know - these are confused and confusing times for the UK media. Will Murdoch make a success of paywalls? No, he doesn't stand a chance.

The front page lead on today's Times holds telling clues about the chances of success. Was it a big exclusive story, held back for this day in order to hammer home good reason to stay loyal to The Times post-pay-wall? No, it was about rail strikes, also a front page story on the Guardian and available widely elsewhere. What content does The Times really envisage will set it apart from the welter of online content freely available?

From today, readers can register at timesplus.co.uk and the initial trial will be free for registered users, putting in place a mechanism that would at least make backtracking profitable.

I've long argued that registration will prove a more profitable path than paid-subscription. It creates valuable audience data and disenfranchises far fewer people in the process. Some will still churn when confronted with a request to submit name, age, address, income bracket etc. but fewer than if requested to stump up their hard-earned for something they once got for free.

And what did you say your name was...?

Is this the worst ever headline/by-line combination? Yes.

Well, I'll be f......

Every now and then, Countdown and probability combine to offer us all a golden moment of planetary allignment... that or the letters come out and nearly make a swear word. Thanks to the Guardian's Media Monkey for flagging this to all of us who were at work keeping the cogs of the global economy turning when the magic happened. Incredibly neither contestant opted for the obvious six-letter word, picking 'Faced' and 'Caged' like they almost didn't want to win!   

 

Why the 'Facebook gives you syphilis' story was so abhorrent

There are many reasons to be disgusted by the Sun's piece today suggesting Facebook is to blame for a rise in syphilis in the North-East. There's the affront to intelligence, the ignorant understanding of the raw data and the failure to properly delve into the claims of their source because they lent themselves so tantalisingly to a sensational headline.

But the biggest shame is the missed opportunity to get a very positive message out there and offer some praise where it is due.

Let me explain. 

Professor Peter Kelly, executive director of public health for NHS Middlesbrough, did apparently say: "Unprotected sex, especially with casual partners, is the biggest risk for syphilis...Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex." He didn't name Facebook but he did link the rise to social networking.

The Sun hacks concerned then just committed the all-too-familiar journalistic crimes of 1) believing somebody saying something is news, and 2) assuming their source is beyond question and his take on the story the only possible explanation.

But what else could be happening here? Consider this Google Trends graph which shows searches and news coverage for three of the major sexually transmitted diseases in England over the past six years (continues): 

What this graph shows is a discernible year-on-year increase in both searches for information on these diseases and online news coverage. That suggests in 2009 there was far greater awareness of sexual health issues than there was in 2008. It is also therefore not a leap to imagine that this increased awareness resulted in increased check-ups and increased detection of diseases which sometimes are left untreated and previously may have gone undetected.

The Department of Health must take some of the credit for increased investment during 2009 in raising awareness of STDs, particularly among teenagers. And like it or not social networks should also be commended - not criticised - for providing the channels and the communities through which much of that awareness-raising messaging was pushed.

@GilesCoren whips up a #SophieDahl flambé

Giles Coren has been promoted to head cheerleader for the angry Twitter mob targeting Sophie Dahl and her cookery show, having sparked many into a frenzy of retweeting with a typically outspoken comment on the social networking site: 

"This Sophie Dahl show - what a crock of bogus, mendacious shite. What a sickening sham. The BBC should be fucking ashamed of itself."

Perhaps he's outraged by the nepotism of it all. Oh hang on, no that's probably not it.

Sophie Dahl may have her knockers...

TV critics and media commentators are already sharpening their matching set of Sebatier knives for supermodel Sophie Dahl whose qualifications to host a BBC cookery show appear to be the subject of some puzzlement.

The Daily Mail appears to be in no doubt as to why Dahl is on our screens and in front of the camera though. Not only have they managed to pick the most cleavage-tastic shot of the rather lovely Ms Dahl but they've even included an in-no-way-gratuitous 'enlarge' button (bottom right) on this one particular picture, allowing us to zoom right in. Thanks for that.

Daily Mail's Weekend: "Nothing too young, please"

The Daily Mail's traditional focus falls fairly wide of the yoof demographic. And here at TheMediaBlog.co.uk, we've had a few digs at the Mail's tendency towards Ludditehood, and its hysterical scepticism of anything to do with the web.

However, we've also seen parts of the Mail - particularly the website - not only cater for much younger tastes, but also demonstrate an impressively web-savvy approach. (A quick look at today's homepage shows a host of names unlikely to excite the grandparents: Mel B, Cheryl Cole, Alexandra Burke and so on.)

So it's interesting to see the print parts of the paper go further in the opposite direction. A Response Source enquiry this week stated:

You may have noticed that Weekend has changed in the last four or five months. There's less of a focus on TV celebs and progammes and more focus on real people with heartwarming tales to tell... Anything from the two world wars, or the forties, fifites or sixties will be welcomed, which will really appeal to readers who are in their fifties, sixties and beyond. Nothing too young please.

The differing readerships of print and online news might seem obvious. But the gulf between the Mail's attitudes towards the web and its actual strategy continues to widen. While its print supplements may hanker for a simpler, gentler time, celebrity names and adundant keywords continue to click harvest on the web.

And while the evil internet will still receive a beating, its dark arts will undoubtedly prevail.

Sun shocker: Facebook gives you... er...syphilis

You can almost picture the dropped jaws and hesitation, even around the news desks of The Sun when somebody suggested "Sex diseases soaring due to Facebook" might be a goer:

Cases of syphilis have increased four-fold ...in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside. And an NHS trust chief said Facebook and similar sites were to blame.

Not unprotected sex then?

Anybody with half a brain must have known the story was a dud and the claims no more credible than linking a rise in STDs to the North-East's regional accents, or a history of coal-mining in the area. This ridiculous story falls down even further when it is revealed:

In Teesside there were 30 cases last year...

So even the data upon which these ridiculous claims are based is not statistically significant. The article then puts the boot in to its own credibility even further by admitting "...the true figure is likely to be higher" - so it wouldn't take much of a swing in those undetected cases to negate any kind of year-on-year increase.

It appears the source of this story was an alert issued by Middlesbrough NHS Trust (thanks to @DrPetra for flagging). And you won't be surprised to hear there was no mention at all of Facebook whose inclusion in the story likely owes more to Sun proprietor Rupert Murdoch happening to own rival site MySpace.

But more to the point, why am I still bothering to point out the obvious flaws in this article? It's a joke. 
 

Gimmick to win it? Telegraph goes crowdsourcing for election hot topics

The Telegraph has launched a dedicated website for readers to debate issues they believe should be at the heart of the forthcoming General Election: Debate2010.

Think of it as crowdsourcing a manifesto; readers will submit concerns, ideas, issues and suggestions and other site visitors will be able to vote on which should be priorities for debate and discussion in the run up to the election.

Of course, the greatest problems with crowdsourcing - if it is to be taken seriously as a credible barometer of nationwide feeling - relate to the quality and size of sample and the insurmountable issue of self-selection (most notably, will this really tell us anything other than what a fairly particular set of demographic groups feel about only those issues they choose to discuss or vote on).

But that is not to say it isn't a noble venture - fostering some debate is certainly better than no debate in the run up to an election where apathy and low turnout could still hold sway. It is also the latest interesting foray into new forms of online content creation and a more 'social' approach to community engagement from the Telegraph. Social media has shown us people want to have their say and the media can no longer run an indefinite lecture. It must be a conversation and the Telegraph is embracing that fact.

Perhaps most importantly though, the site if successful will provide not only increased traffic to the Telegraph website but will also provide editors with a very clear idea of the issues and debates it should be covering in the run up to the election - the kind of reader intelligence no media outlet can ever have too much of.

Google sidesteps great firewall of China

Google tonight switched its Chinese language search services from mainland China to Hong Kong from where it will have greater freedoms to operate without the heavy hand of Chinese government censorship. Users attempting to visit Google.cn - the company's traditional Chinese presence - will be redirected to the Google.com.hk site which returns uncensored results on outlawed terms such as 'Falun Gong' and 'Tiananmen Square Massacre'.

On its own blog, Google states: "Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong."

The move puts the ball squarely back in the court of the Chinese government whose response could plausibly be to enforce a block on access to the .hk domain from within mainland China.

This report from The Guardian (who have also been running a live blog detailing the effect and fallout of the switchover):

Has the Daily Mail extended BBC the 'sincerest form of flattery'?

There may have been some red faces over at the Mail this morning after TheMediaBlog revealed it had run a story first covered in October 2008 by the BBC and other media outlets, including the Guardian and, funnily enough the Daily Mail. 

So how did it come to write such an old story, having covered it once before? The Media Blog readers think they know they answer. John Self wrote:

"I think I know why this happened. This story was in the 'most read' list on the BBC News site last week (it happens occasionally with 'quirky' stories from years ago, as email links spread in their unpredictable way, and then people see it on the Most Read list and click it, thus enhancing the effect). I guess a lazy Mail hack clicked the story, and decided to cover it without looking at the date at the top."

While Gordon chipped in:

"I'm willing to bet this is ...because a Daily Mail "journalist" saw the story appearing on the BBC News 'Most read' section yesterday, didn't check the article date, then went right ahead and plagiarised..., sorry *was inspired by* it."

And Chris added:

"Damn the BBC for not taking down its old content!"

While it was left for Andrew P. to chime in:

"The Daily Mail may hate the BBC but that clearly doesn't stop them stealing its content. Sadly it's been caught out here by the fact the story it stole had reappeared in the BBC's Most-Read section."

I'm sure there is a far more innocent explanation. Probably just a bug in the content management system, or a problem related to Y2K... in fact yeah, that'll be it - it was the interweb's fault.