Red letter day for Web 2.0?

November 19, 2008

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Curiously, many people in the media remain unaware of what is meant by the term ‘Web 2.0′. Not so, the British Government. As the HM Treasury website proudly says: Be the first to know about the Chancellor’s speech and the Treasury’s Pre-Budget Report summary, wherever you are. Text PBR to 83377 (standard rates apply) to be sent a free text message link to Directgov mobile, where you can follow the Chancellor’s speech and all the key announcements.

So could 24 November, when the Chancellor will make his Pre-Budget Report speech to the House of Commons, be the Web 2.0 tipping point?

Perhaps, though possibly Twitter could have been offered as an adjunct to the rather ancient SMS means of communication. But elsewhere, it seems that we’re going Web 2.0 mad. The BBC is to stream BBC One and BBC Two live from next week, joining BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies and BBC News, while at least one newspaper increasingly resembles a TV channel. It doesn’t compete with YouTube, recently dubbed “the biggest TV station on the planet“, but given that video is expected to account for half of all internet traffic by 2012 this seems an eminently good direction for the Telegraph to take.

But is it journalism? The same question was posed of blogs just two or three years ago. Now every newspaper has them and, as the Economist reports here, blogging has become yet more mainstream as companies and firms understand the advantages to having their own blogs.  In journalistic terms, The Huffington Post perhaps represents the apogee of contemporary professional blogging and pulled in 4.5 million unique visitors in September alone. In other words, everyone’s at it. Far from blogging sounding the death knell for quality writing, blogs now help to foster it.

For a list of reasons to embrace the Web 2.0 world, see this post; there’s also some more good stuff here. If you’re still not convinced, look out for 24 November.  One small step for the Chancellor might just herald a sea change among the sceptics.

 

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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
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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.