The Internet: A Parasite Slowly Killing Its Host?

August 10, 2009

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Mindful that he is “riffing on the journalism of others”, Blade commends an excellent piece from The New York Review of Books by Michael Massing entitled The News about the Internet. Massing delves expertly into the topic vexing the media more than any other: how to survive in a world of “sharp plunges in circulation, the dizzying fall-off in revenues, the burgeoning debt, the mounting losses”. Reviewing various books, essays and key blogs, he examines the charge that the internet is a parasite slowly killing its host and assesses the way in which news gathering and reporting has changed in the last few years.

Blade empathises with two points in particular. In another guise Blade is an old school journalist, and as such he still struggles with the idea of long-form journalism online. He finds an ally in the form of Jacob Weisberg, the former editor of Slate, who says: “The one nut we’ve never fully cracked is how to do long-form journalism online. Doing New Yorker -type pieces on-line doesn’t work.”

But in another incarnation Blade is a serial blogger. He therefore understands where Massing is coming from when he writes: “Writers on the Internet are under constant pressure to post so as to keep the traffic flowing. Many who write full-time for Web sites complain of the Taylorite work pace and the lack of time it leaves to think or to work on longer pieces.”

Massing concludes by stating that what is going on in the collision of traditional media and the blogosphere is a “profound if unsettling process of decentralization and democratization”.  However, he believes that “traditional news organizations continue to play a critical part in keeping the public informed”, and plans to cover two key questions in a subsequent piece, the first being whether ‘old media’ can adapt to the rapidly changing news environment, the second “who is going to pay for quality news and information in the future?”

If Massing’s next piece is as insightful and well executed as this one, it may achieve the same level of popularity as Clay Shirky’s notorious Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. And, Blade would wager, it’ll be especially welcome to the executives at Guardian News & Media as they ponder the future of the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper.

Apparently, three-quarters of people on the web use Internet Explorer.

 

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When a lawyer’s son is before the law

September 8, 2010

A lawyer of Swordplay’s acquaintance finds himself in a fix.

“My teenage son is to be interviewed by the local constable,” he tells us. “He is alleged to have committed an offence.”

We gasp, for such seems the appropriate response, and then ask: is it serious?

“No, it is not,” our troubled legal friend tells us. “In the great scheme of things, my son’s alleged transgression is about as de minimis as they get.”

For a split second, we wonder if said teenage son is cognisant of lawyerly terms of art such as de minimis, but rapidly conclude that the answer to this question is not a sine qua non of further discourse. And so we press on. That sounds good, we say, relatively speaking, at least.

“Yes,” says the lawyer, “but I am at a loss as to what to do with him. Do I come down hard and ground him, or do I play the liberal card, or do I find a compromise?”

That depends, we aver.

“On what?” asks our man.

On whether you would prefer to deal with your son’s alleged offence as a lawyer, or as a father, or as a father who is a lawyer, or maybe even as a lawyer who is a father.

“I see your point,” says the lawyer. And then, as if to prove that there is no cure for recidivism, he says: “The offence is, after all, de minimis.”

Without prejudice, we add.

Pictured: something out of Kafka. Now there was a man who knew about the law. And had a tough old father, too.

Max Mosley and Wayne Rooney: bedfellows?

September 6, 2010

We rarely enjoy pondering Max Mosley – the man, the sins, the legal action, what he stands for – but confess to a degree of grudging admiration for his tenacity in trying to change the law of privacy. As this story from the Independent has it, Mosley has lodged a request with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg asking that, by law, journalists must inform the subject of a story of the private details they intend to print, prior to publication.

We suspect the motor racing man would never have thought it, but he would appear to have an unlikely bedfellow in a certain England footballer. Step forward, Wayne Rooney, who would presumably put his name to Mosley’s petition.

Pictured courtesy of NashvilleScene: some bedfellows are stranger than fiction.


Memo to Freelance Writers: return that editor’s call quickly

September 3, 2010

Woe betide those who freelance and fail to return a call.

We say this upon hearing of a normally prolific freelance journalist who picked up a voicemail from an editor at one of the nationals on Tuesday afternoon. Please call us, was the message, and it could mean just one thing – a commission.

Our hero’s habitual practice is to return such calls as soon as is reasonably practicable, as m’learned friends might put it. In practice, that would habitually mean within a couple of hours. Most atypically, and for reasons we have yet to fathom, our man failed to call back for a full 24 hours.

By then, said editor had looked elsewhere. One of our man’s competitors had the gig, an interesting piece about cricket and the law, one which might just be in The Times today and which, we assume, asks whether the Pakistan cricket team have been caught out (in the legal sense, you understand).

We make no judgement on the no ball scandal, save to say that it is a scandal, but in another sense the moral is clear: in the fast-paced world of modern media, he who hesitates is lost.

Pictured courtesy of PrintedClothing.com: a fast-selling shirt.