The Purpose of a Thought for the Day

March 26, 2009

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Regular readers of Swordplay will be aware that we hew, from deep within the labyrinths in which we toil, a thought for the day. We do so every day, save on weekends, when we try to suspend thought and simply be. We are not alone in enjoying a thought for the day, for it is a staple of many media enterprises. And no wonder, too: a thought for the day is a succinct and reliable means of stimulating debate.

That being the case, when we posted Milan Kundera’s line that “Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation”, did we “lose all credibility”, as one reader opines?

Or did we simply post a thought for the day, as is our habit, sans editorial endorsement?

And now we’re thinking about this, what, exactly, did Kundera mean? We’re not sure – which is why we put his thought up in the first place.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? LaTur’s image, courtesy of Flickr, makes us wonder. It also reminds us of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But that’s another story (by Milan Kundera, as it happens).

 

2 Responses to “The Purpose of a Thought for the Day”

Posted by:
The Wise Owl of the City on March 26, 2009 at 10:36 pm

What did Kundera mean? I haven’t read anything by him but I think he meant to make people think. Glad to see that whoever writes this blog has the same effect!

Posted by:
Dillon on March 27, 2009 at 3:21 pm

Perhaps Kundera meant that all businesses need to do to be successful is come up with an innovative product/service and then bring it to market? Finance, HR functions etc would all be supporting those two key functions. In which case – he was probably right 10 years ago but not in today’s age of increased corporate social responsibility and citizenship where businesses have a duty to and increasingly symbiotic relationship with their markets…

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Good work by Rusbridger

February 10, 2012
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The headline says it all: ‘Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger takes pay cut‘.

Dan Sabbagh’s piece says a bit more: said editor ‘emailed staff at the newspaper to say that his salary in the upcoming 2012-13 financial year will be £395,010, compared with £438,900 in the current financial year’.

Some voices say: ‘How worthy.’

Others opine: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

But we say: good work by Mr Rusbridger. For the sake of the media’s survival, we hope that others in senior positions in the industry will follow suit.

Image of toolkit allegedly deployed by Alan Rusbridger courtesy of Flickr user LollyKnit.

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.