To the zeitgeist, and beyond

February 26, 2010

Zeitgeist460

What’s hot this Friday afternoon? Aside from our burning desire to down tools and say farewell to the working week?

Well, the Guardian avows that Zeitgeist is where the action is. Zeitgeist is a visual record of what people are finding interesting on guardian.co.uk at any given time, but it looks (and behaves) a bit differently from most other things on the Guardian site. Indeed, you could say that it takes Fleet Street’s embrace of social media a stage further. As they say at Zeitgeist: “While other bits of the site are curated by editors (like the front page, or individual sections) or metadata (like blogs, which display in reverse-chronological order), Zeitgeist is dynamic, powered by the attention of users”.  In other words, dear readers, you call the shots.

Zeitgeist’s creators say that it isn’t finished yet, but this work-in-progress will definitely be worth watching. Will it emerge as truly democratic, or prone to manipulation? We shall see.

Meanwhile, we learn from the good folk at RollonFriday that the Centre for Brand Analysis announced this week that The Law Society had come top of the legal sector of its Superbrands poll. The poll aims to measure the perceived quality, reliability and distinction of a brand and is drawn up from the opinions of 1,700 business professionals across the UK. Overall, the Law Society has the 75th best brand in the UK.

That’s pretty good going, and might make the vacant Commissioning Editor’s job at the Law Society Gazette all the more attractive. Who knows – perhaps whoever takes it will even propel the Law Society onto the Guardian’s Zeitgeist pages?

Have a good weekend, on the cutting edge, or otherwise.

 

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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.