I'm a web celeb, get me out of there!
A sex pest rang this week to pester me about his privacy.
He wanted me to remove his court case from our web archive in keeping with Home Office guidelines about limiting the time criminal charges are held online.
Not sure which one he was referring to but he didn't seem to accept that the public had a right to know who among us had been compromising 12-year-old girls and failed to see the irony that he had commited his crimes - via the web.
But he was just the latest in a very long line of archive appellants to come out of the virtual woodwork wanting to rewrite history. Here are some of the best of late:
1. The party goer pictured (quite innocently) standing too close to a woman that wasn't his wife. (Poss solution: add a link to Relate)
2. The fantasist who claimed he was being watched by shadowy figures and didn't want his address used. We only reported it as Texas. (Poss solution: cc the CIA when replying)
3. The rite of passage youth who, on seeing his picture in the paper, realised he was no oil painting and didn't want to compound his misfortune by letting strangers clock him. (Poss solution; Free Photoshop download link)
4. The smiling couple who wanted their wedding picture expunged but wouldn't say why. They made their requests separately. At different times. From different numbers. (Poss solution: two free subscriptions to the dating site)
5. The businesswoman delighted with her print interview who later decided she was "probably a bit misquoted" when she the ex-partner she had shafted read it. (Poss solution: doorstep the partner for a quote. You never know.)
6. The elderly couple who bought a guest house only to Google it and find a year-old review condemning it as Devon's Fawlty Towers. (Actual solution: clarify as per moral obligation and suggest to Travel desk they review again later).
As for the sex pest quoting the Home Office: I referred him to the Foreign Office.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Friday, December 04, 2009
Murdoch and the tide of change
It's for good reason that the industry is gripped with Rupert Murdoch's plans to charge readers to see stories. And it's not just about whether he has, as many first thought, lost the plot. It's more to do with the fact that he’s in the enviable position of actually having one, for better or for worse.
Whatever his plans, he’s making an audacious statement that flies in the face of the panic sweeping newsrooms: telling Google he can do without them at a time search engines have begun dictating what we write.
As someone used to dictating the agenda, certain practices may not sit well with him, and the pandering to optimisation may be one of them. I’m not decrying SEO, far from it, but the thought of national newsrooms being told by their SEO police to write something – anything – about Jedward or the some nutter who’s taking Twitter by storm because they’re scoring well on Google Trends must rub a bit.
Not to mention the thought of some lackey sending a round-robin: "Can we start tagging stories ‘fags’” mid-budget speech or “Euro” during election night just so we can stay keyword savvy.
The issue here is not about whether he has hit upon the holy grail of business plans but how enduring is his influence as a catalyst for change. We're seeing the green shoots of that already.
Journalism as a whole was a late adopter to the web and many of the old school are still just waking up to what it represents. At its best, it means serious industry names joining key debates with conviction; at its worst, the unseemly scramble for seats from the dead wood eager to nail their colours to a new mast and reinvent themselves. (“Hey everyone, I'm now in charge of digital paperback blogging. Does that mean I get a student?”) Don't tell me that doesn't ring a bell?
Then there’s the fallacy that integration would reduce costs in Fleet Street and the qualitative cost to local journalism by virtue of the fact that it has (seriously, more on that later...).
We’ve got to accept that the face of journalism will change as the dam we’ve been holding back for the past few years finally bursts. The profile of those practicing it will change with the job description we’ve yet to write – and the commercial future will lay not with the words we produce but how we leverage our brands as a tool to attract something that will.
There are more twists and turns to come and, while Murdoch may not end up leading the change, he’s doing what he’s done many times in the past and forcing us more quickly into it.
It's for good reason that the industry is gripped with Rupert Murdoch's plans to charge readers to see stories. And it's not just about whether he has, as many first thought, lost the plot. It's more to do with the fact that he’s in the enviable position of actually having one, for better or for worse.
Whatever his plans, he’s making an audacious statement that flies in the face of the panic sweeping newsrooms: telling Google he can do without them at a time search engines have begun dictating what we write.
As someone used to dictating the agenda, certain practices may not sit well with him, and the pandering to optimisation may be one of them. I’m not decrying SEO, far from it, but the thought of national newsrooms being told by their SEO police to write something – anything – about Jedward or the some nutter who’s taking Twitter by storm because they’re scoring well on Google Trends must rub a bit.
Not to mention the thought of some lackey sending a round-robin: "Can we start tagging stories ‘fags’” mid-budget speech or “Euro” during election night just so we can stay keyword savvy.
The issue here is not about whether he has hit upon the holy grail of business plans but how enduring is his influence as a catalyst for change. We're seeing the green shoots of that already.
Journalism as a whole was a late adopter to the web and many of the old school are still just waking up to what it represents. At its best, it means serious industry names joining key debates with conviction; at its worst, the unseemly scramble for seats from the dead wood eager to nail their colours to a new mast and reinvent themselves. (“Hey everyone, I'm now in charge of digital paperback blogging. Does that mean I get a student?”) Don't tell me that doesn't ring a bell?
Then there’s the fallacy that integration would reduce costs in Fleet Street and the qualitative cost to local journalism by virtue of the fact that it has (seriously, more on that later...).
We’ve got to accept that the face of journalism will change as the dam we’ve been holding back for the past few years finally bursts. The profile of those practicing it will change with the job description we’ve yet to write – and the commercial future will lay not with the words we produce but how we leverage our brands as a tool to attract something that will.
There are more twists and turns to come and, while Murdoch may not end up leading the change, he’s doing what he’s done many times in the past and forcing us more quickly into it.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Here's a couple we did earlier...
Another one for the mantelpiece, courtesy of the European Newspaper Awards.
Was this a case of months of planning - or just an example of the amazing things you can achieve when you're hard up for a front page picture? You decide.
Either way, we're gonna need a bigger mantelpiece people.
Another one for the mantelpiece, courtesy of the European Newspaper Awards.
Was this a case of months of planning - or just an example of the amazing things you can achieve when you're hard up for a front page picture? You decide.
Either way, we're gonna need a bigger mantelpiece people.
What Will they do next?
Congratulations to Will Lewis on his latest promotion - this time to launch a new division of Telegraph Digital following his Harvard sabbatical.
I'm not sure what a move to Euston means for the man Murdoch Mclellan first hired as City Editor then promoted to Deputy Editor even before he'd finished his gardening leave at The Times.
But it was only a matter of time before Tony Gallagher cashed in his brownie points over the MPs expenses exclusive to take the editor's chair.
What intrigues me most about this, though, is the promise of 50 new digital jobs.
The Telegraph Group has come on leaps and bounds, but one thing they have got disgracefully wrong over the past year or so is the misguided way it it has discarded some of its best talent, particularly among the more anonymous, junior ranks. If a stint at business school has taught Lewis anything, I hope it is how to recognise where the real value in a workforce lies.
And, maybe, invite a few of them back.
Congratulations to Will Lewis on his latest promotion - this time to launch a new division of Telegraph Digital following his Harvard sabbatical.
I'm not sure what a move to Euston means for the man Murdoch Mclellan first hired as City Editor then promoted to Deputy Editor even before he'd finished his gardening leave at The Times.
But it was only a matter of time before Tony Gallagher cashed in his brownie points over the MPs expenses exclusive to take the editor's chair.
What intrigues me most about this, though, is the promise of 50 new digital jobs.
The Telegraph Group has come on leaps and bounds, but one thing they have got disgracefully wrong over the past year or so is the misguided way it it has discarded some of its best talent, particularly among the more anonymous, junior ranks. If a stint at business school has taught Lewis anything, I hope it is how to recognise where the real value in a workforce lies.
And, maybe, invite a few of them back.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
A timely intervention
I've just joined an interesting think-tank which aims to explore emerging cross-media business models.
It's an academic network funded by London's Kings College and Bristol's Brunel University and has the backing of a number of diverse digital businesses and the AOP.
It's early days and I'll report back on progress. This space needs to be watched.
PS: a small boast. We've just bagged another award. Need a bigger mantelpiece.
I've just joined an interesting think-tank which aims to explore emerging cross-media business models.
It's an academic network funded by London's Kings College and Bristol's Brunel University and has the backing of a number of diverse digital businesses and the AOP.
It's early days and I'll report back on progress. This space needs to be watched.
PS: a small boast. We've just bagged another award. Need a bigger mantelpiece.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Katie pays the Price
I hope the Sun’s first-person headline on Katie Price’s jungle torment was rhetorical. Since she returned to I’m a Celebrity last week, strutting around in a Lara Croft outfit and telling everyone she was there for “closure” when she meant exposure, viewers have been voting for her to do every gruelling, filthy and frankly, highly disturbing task on offer. Thus the question: Why are they picking on me?
The answer, as your publicist must surely have told you, is simple: that’s what you are there for.
Anyone who builds themselves into a massively lucrative brand by taking their clothes off, having boob job after lip job after boob job, earns a bundle from a fly-on-the-wall documentaries on their every movements and flogs their wedding pix for substantial sums must realise that is their role in life.
This show is built on the premise that viewers can pay small amounts via their phone bills to put minor and rather annoying celebs in the stocks, happy in the knowledge that the show’s producers will throw more than tomatoes and rotting eggs at them.
And given the C-list group they have in there at the moment, a cockroach or two down Katie’s cleavage is, frankly, the best we can hope for. Which is also probably why she attracts a considerably higher fee than her camp mates.
That aside, let's hope the medical support we keep hearing about is as good as we’d hope. Sideshow that Price is, can it really be right to subject anyone to such pressure? Is it wise for someone with a genuine water phobia to be entombed underground in the dark surrounded by rats – and then literally flushed by a sudden and surprise torrent into an underground tank and left screaming to get out?
To give her credit, she does get stuck in. But all the controlled conditions and teams of medics on hand doesn't mean someone can’t have a heart attack?
I hope the Sun’s first-person headline on Katie Price’s jungle torment was rhetorical. Since she returned to I’m a Celebrity last week, strutting around in a Lara Croft outfit and telling everyone she was there for “closure” when she meant exposure, viewers have been voting for her to do every gruelling, filthy and frankly, highly disturbing task on offer. Thus the question: Why are they picking on me?
The answer, as your publicist must surely have told you, is simple: that’s what you are there for.
Anyone who builds themselves into a massively lucrative brand by taking their clothes off, having boob job after lip job after boob job, earns a bundle from a fly-on-the-wall documentaries on their every movements and flogs their wedding pix for substantial sums must realise that is their role in life.
This show is built on the premise that viewers can pay small amounts via their phone bills to put minor and rather annoying celebs in the stocks, happy in the knowledge that the show’s producers will throw more than tomatoes and rotting eggs at them.
And given the C-list group they have in there at the moment, a cockroach or two down Katie’s cleavage is, frankly, the best we can hope for. Which is also probably why she attracts a considerably higher fee than her camp mates.
That aside, let's hope the medical support we keep hearing about is as good as we’d hope. Sideshow that Price is, can it really be right to subject anyone to such pressure? Is it wise for someone with a genuine water phobia to be entombed underground in the dark surrounded by rats – and then literally flushed by a sudden and surprise torrent into an underground tank and left screaming to get out?
To give her credit, she does get stuck in. But all the controlled conditions and teams of medics on hand doesn't mean someone can’t have a heart attack?
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Bad press for adverorials
The Express's thinly veiled attempts to pass off advertorials as real news was tantamount to a Premiership star not trying too hard against his old club. At the end of the day, and with the score at 0-0, no-one gets hurt, so what if a few rules got a bent a little?
After all, how many travel puffs have you seen tarted up as the poetically knowing prose of the world weary. Or adjectives laden as a hefty tip in a breathless blurb disguised as a restaurant review?
I don't even blame Richard Desmond. He's a businessman. I'd expect him to do what he could to keep an advertiser happy.
But the question remains: how the hell did it get on the page? And it shouldn’t have taken the Advertising Standards Authority to see it for what it was – a creeping cancer that should have never dodged the copytaster’s spike.
As for ad concessions, I think the Sunday Express probably did enough with last week’s awful Tesco Club Card ad that reduced their splash on The McCann’s stalker to a mere five lines.
The Express's thinly veiled attempts to pass off advertorials as real news was tantamount to a Premiership star not trying too hard against his old club. At the end of the day, and with the score at 0-0, no-one gets hurt, so what if a few rules got a bent a little?
After all, how many travel puffs have you seen tarted up as the poetically knowing prose of the world weary. Or adjectives laden as a hefty tip in a breathless blurb disguised as a restaurant review?
I don't even blame Richard Desmond. He's a businessman. I'd expect him to do what he could to keep an advertiser happy.
But the question remains: how the hell did it get on the page? And it shouldn’t have taken the Advertising Standards Authority to see it for what it was – a creeping cancer that should have never dodged the copytaster’s spike.
As for ad concessions, I think the Sunday Express probably did enough with last week’s awful Tesco Club Card ad that reduced their splash on The McCann’s stalker to a mere five lines.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson: how to cover a running story
Michael Jackson’s death fell just right for the late editions, to the relief of night editors who must have been wetting themselves at the thought of running a 3am Final in limbo.
But they had enough on their plates, coping with web updates as speculation grew and newsrooms turned in desperation to Twitter which was, to anyone sifting their tweets, ahead of the game with the first referrals to TMZ, who broke the story way ahead of anyone.
It was interesting reading. As the midnight hour approached and many of the 60,000 tweets were reflecting the death line (Thanks to David Cohen, or dgcohen23, for that), The Times prefixed their home page splash with Breaking: Jackson 'dies' after suffering heart attack. The story moved very slowly though and the more follows was slow to live up to its promise.
The BBC got round it by splashing on Gravely ill Jackson in hospital and shoving their media player across top of the home page for some real-time reporting.
The Guardian did have Michael Jackson dead but attributed with say reports. They too offered only a few lines. Oddly, they were still attributing doubt to the hours-old: Farrah Fawcett dies at age of 53 – PA.
The SEO-savvy Telegraph wisely used cardiac arrest in a clunky-but-friendly 13-word head and repeated it in a 22-word summary. They did much better on the copy though, pulling together a story long enough to justify the subject, even if they had Micheal in the headline briefly. Ouch. Been there.
Then, as Google was apparently crashing under the strain of a search-term siege, TV news reports repeated, almost by the minute, that the reports were “uncomfirmed”.
At around 11.50, the BBC announced: Singer Michael Jackson is 'dead' then rather sloppily added a list of links that included the earlier gravely-ill story.
USA Today fared a lot worse. At 11.30, their site led with Michael Jackson dies at 50 - but clicked through to a lengthy obit with no mention of his death or the circumstances. A case of grab what you can from the basket and throw it up. An intro would have helped.
The New York Times had Michael Jackson, 50, is dead but put the story in the 'arts beat' section. Worse, it consisted of an incoherent series of blog-style posts with garbled reaction
By this time the Telegraph were rewriting the style book on attribution with an intro that announced he was dead, according to showbiz site TMZ, the LA Times, AP, the BBC and PA. Back well covered then, chaps.
The Mirror joined the slower sites by sitting on a couple of pars with a more follows and The Sun relied on a series of Yahoo links!
It was harder for the live broadcasters. Sky managed to grab a bit of airtime with Paul Gambaccini who managed to fill a quote book (remember those?) on his own with gems such as: “It’s the biggest news story in the world at the moment. I know it’s number one in Japan for example”; and when likening his death to that of John Lennon, adding: “There was one difference there. There was violence. Murder is much worse than a heart attack.”
But quote of the night went to Sky: “We just spoke to Uri Geller, a close friend. He was so emotional he couldn’t speak to us.”
Michael Jackson’s death fell just right for the late editions, to the relief of night editors who must have been wetting themselves at the thought of running a 3am Final in limbo.
But they had enough on their plates, coping with web updates as speculation grew and newsrooms turned in desperation to Twitter which was, to anyone sifting their tweets, ahead of the game with the first referrals to TMZ, who broke the story way ahead of anyone.
It was interesting reading. As the midnight hour approached and many of the 60,000 tweets were reflecting the death line (Thanks to David Cohen, or dgcohen23, for that), The Times prefixed their home page splash with Breaking: Jackson 'dies' after suffering heart attack. The story moved very slowly though and the more follows was slow to live up to its promise.
The BBC got round it by splashing on Gravely ill Jackson in hospital and shoving their media player across top of the home page for some real-time reporting.
The Guardian did have Michael Jackson dead but attributed with say reports. They too offered only a few lines. Oddly, they were still attributing doubt to the hours-old: Farrah Fawcett dies at age of 53 – PA.
The SEO-savvy Telegraph wisely used cardiac arrest in a clunky-but-friendly 13-word head and repeated it in a 22-word summary. They did much better on the copy though, pulling together a story long enough to justify the subject, even if they had Micheal in the headline briefly. Ouch. Been there.
Then, as Google was apparently crashing under the strain of a search-term siege, TV news reports repeated, almost by the minute, that the reports were “uncomfirmed”.
At around 11.50, the BBC announced: Singer Michael Jackson is 'dead' then rather sloppily added a list of links that included the earlier gravely-ill story.
USA Today fared a lot worse. At 11.30, their site led with Michael Jackson dies at 50 - but clicked through to a lengthy obit with no mention of his death or the circumstances. A case of grab what you can from the basket and throw it up. An intro would have helped.
The New York Times had Michael Jackson, 50, is dead but put the story in the 'arts beat' section. Worse, it consisted of an incoherent series of blog-style posts with garbled reaction
By this time the Telegraph were rewriting the style book on attribution with an intro that announced he was dead, according to showbiz site TMZ, the LA Times, AP, the BBC and PA. Back well covered then, chaps.
The Mirror joined the slower sites by sitting on a couple of pars with a more follows and The Sun relied on a series of Yahoo links!
It was harder for the live broadcasters. Sky managed to grab a bit of airtime with Paul Gambaccini who managed to fill a quote book (remember those?) on his own with gems such as: “It’s the biggest news story in the world at the moment. I know it’s number one in Japan for example”; and when likening his death to that of John Lennon, adding: “There was one difference there. There was violence. Murder is much worse than a heart attack.”
But quote of the night went to Sky: “We just spoke to Uri Geller, a close friend. He was so emotional he couldn’t speak to us.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
