On reading the paper

June 4, 2009

old-school-newspaper-readers

Newspapers, magazines and TV channels are busy trying to work out their future, but, according to a report by Group M, WPP’s media agency, quite a few of them don’t have one.

The report’s prognosis is bleak. “No previous ad recession has put household media names at risk like this one has,” Group M said on Wednesday. “Advertiser demand is set to remain weak this summer, so it is possible that mergers, restructures and closures will accelerate as we move into the fourth quarter.” In other words, come the end of the year there will be some high-profile casualties, especially in print media.

Call him old-school if you must, or even antediluvian, but Blade still enjoys at least half an hour a day in company of his favourite newspaper. On Sundays, he enjoys even more time than this, with more than one paper, too. Is it really the case that these innocent delights are to disappear? That one day Blade will be unable to read the FT Magazine, or the Times Weekend supplement, or the FT’s Arts section, or the Times news pages, to say nothing of the Guardian’s Review pages or the Observer’s monthly sport magazine, because none of them exist? Or rather, that they will exist, but in some glitzy, handheld, electricity-dependent techno form which no one will want to spend time with?

Pictured thanks to photo_history: Blade and a friend enjoying the ancient hobby of ‘reading a newspaper’.

 

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From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.

Not so right said Fred

February 2, 2012
fred hat

So Farewell, then, Sir Fred Goodwin.

Now you are just Fred.

Not Right Said Fred, but plain Fred.

The Forfeiture Committee did for you.

No one had heard of it before,

But Dave said it had to act, and it did.

Trouble is that no one knows what to think.

Is it ‘Alas, poor Fred‘,

Or ‘Hurray! Sir Fred is dead!’?

We don’t know.

Do you?

By A. Mob, aged 1,378 and a half.