Credit be where credit’s due

January 5, 2012
daily_mail_murderers

We return to Swordplay enamoured of a man called Alfred. It was he who solved a WordPress glitch that has prevented us from accessing this humble blog for some three weeks. Thank you, Alfred.

Should we also thank Paul Dacre for the Mail’s notorious ‘Murderers’ headline in 1997? Everyone else seems to be doing so, and, now that there have at last been two convictions for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, we agree with the good professor: it would be churlish not to, whatever doubts we may harbour about the Mail as a newspaper. Credit be where credit is due, then. We recall the day we read Dacre’s call to arms, a daring move based upon tireless work by its journalists and information from a high-ranking police source who swore that the accused were guilty. Hence the description of the men as ‘murderers’, with an invitation that they consult their learned friends and sue for libel if the Mail had got it wrong. They never did. However sensationalistic, however annoyingly inflammatory at times, however cosily middle England, the Mail’s move was a brilliant piece of journalism, one which has resulted in two vile racists finally being behind bars. So far as we are aware, it is unique, too – please correct us if we are wrong.

Praise be to Dacre and the Mail, but we’re not so impressed by Rod Liddle. His Spectator article, published three days after the Lawrence trial had begun, has been referred to the Attorney General in connection with a possible of contempt of court. We make no judgement on the facts, but we do feel that Liddle is one of those annoying columnists who confuses being provocative – getting a rise from his readers – with writing good copy which prompts thought, analysis and debate. Today’s media has many such culprits. Perhaps they might like to resolve, for 2012, to think before they write?

Lastly, before wishing all of our readers a prosperous new year, Clay Shirky asks whether 2012 will be the year in which newspapers finally figure out how to reward their best customers. We commend Shirky’s piece, which is considered and sensible, but if he is really asking if 2012 will be the year in which newspapers finally figure out what to do with the internet (and how to make money out of it), we regret to say: ‘No’.

Happy new year to Swordplay’s readers – and the estimable Alfred. Meanwhile, pictured is the Mail’s front page from February 14, 2007.

 

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If you’re Joey Barton, attack is not the best form of defence

May 17, 2012

Interesting times, these, in the life of Joey Barton.

If the violence displayed by the QPR captain at Manchester City last Sunday was remarkable, his subsequent conduct on Twitter has been astonishing. Barton appears to have radically reinterpreted the notion that attack is the best form of defence, lashing out at all and sundry via a series of tweets whose ultimate effect is entirely self-destructive.

In the past 24 hours, Barton has accepted one charge of violent conduct at the Etihad Stadium but denied another. The FA seems set to throw the book at him, and his club has declared that it will deal with the matter after the result of the FA investigation. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that QPR’s management team and board hope that the FA ban Barton for so long a period (four months and more) that their reported desire to rip up his contract can only be bolstered.

What, then, should Barton do? Should he:

(a) Keep his head down and say nothing, or

(b) Issue a sensible statement in which he acknowledges that both his conduct at the Etihad and subsequent tweets have brought QPR into disrepute, and

(c) Add an apology to said statement, or

(d) Go to Portugal, log onto Twitter and tweet that the world is against him but that he doesn’t care because everyone is a moron and he’s worked really hard to get where he is and if anyone is nasty to him again he is going to expose their secrets.

The answer is not (d).

The moral of the story is that if you’re a loose cannon, when you turn attack into defence there is a danger that you will blow yourself up.

Gunning foglessly for clarity

May 15, 2012

A fine piece, this, on Winston Churchill’s gift for language and the obscurantism that goes with so much corporate communication.

But wait, what’s this? Could this injunction have been phrased rather more successfully:

Be concrete, not abstract. Use metaphors to get your message across.

Metaphors are, by definition, not exactly concrete. But be that as it may: there is a lot of sound advice in Clare Lynch’s piece and a revelation, too. We had never heard of the Gunning Fog Index.  But it exists, and reveals the age at which someone would have to leave full-time education to understand given text.

We’re pleased to display our own Gunning Fog rating for the above words. That of the Churchill speech cited by Ms Lynch was 9.698.

The Gunning Fog index is 9.585

Spin at the Leveson Inquiry

May 9, 2012
Leveson witch hunt

The idea that Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry’s QC, Robert Jay, are in need of PR advice is intriguing.

Surely their respective tasks ought to be immune from spin? Then again, perhaps the way in which they execute them is deserving of some communications advice. Either way, times have changed. A similar inquiry from yesteryear (and such do exist) would surely not have been accompanied, albeit informally, by communications advice.

Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a portrait of the Leveson Inquiry.