Category Archives: Steam media

Harry’s war

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Hooray for Marina Hyde…

On the one hand, it was nice to see Prince Harry in a British army uniform, as opposed to one of Hitler’s. It’s a little bit like Pokemon, really. I’m hoping he’ll give us a highly collectible Hutu warrior snap soon. Gotta catch ’em all! On the other, is there anyone over Pokemon-playing age who believes it was really worth it? The sheer number of man-hours and money lavished on allowing one young man to experience job satisfaction is mind-boggling. It has to be the most fatuous use of Ministry of Defence resources since Geoff Hoon.

According to the executive director of the Society of Editors, who helped establish the controversial media blackout, it was not designed to mislead readers and viewers but to ultimately give them “a deeper insight into a new side of Prince Harry”. But how completely intriguing. And yet, is he basically still a fairly dim, fairly affable chap, you might ask? It would appear so. But he’s being fairly dim and fairly affable in Afghanistan. Or rather, he was until the news broke, at which point a detailed, prearranged plan to get him out – how many logistical brains are wasted on this nonsense? – was mobilised. So at least we have an exit strategy for Prince Harry, if not for the actual war…

Harry’s secret war

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Like many people, I’ve been irritated by the idiotic coverage of Prince Harry’s truncated wartime experiences. So I was looking forward to reading what my colleague Peter Preston would have to say on the matter. As ever, he’s spot on:

Whatever MPs planning more internet curbs may say (and the generals of Burma sing much the same shrill tune), there is no effective way of leaning on a few blokes in London to shut up in the national interest if zillions of websites are tuned in and wholly reactive. General Sir Richard Dannatt should know that as unflinchingly as any other officer commanding. Helmand isn’t the playing fields of Eton. Al-Qaeda has many formidable internet operators (and many potential press officers). Every home-grown terrorist trial ends in a pile of emails. Deploying Harry in supposed secret could never last. The fix was always going to come loose – and pose questions about what press and Palace should try to fix in a twenty-first century where freedom of information goes rather further than indignant prose and pix brokers would like.

In the new world of instant and multiple communication, reality is the true taskmaster. Is it sensible to encourage the prince to be a proper, deployable soldier? Answer yes and he (never mind the men around him) may or may not be at greater risk. Is he ready to accept that risk? Is the army (never mind cop-out commentaries about the men he serves with) prepared to put him in danger? Is Clarence House? If the answer to all those questions is ‘yes’, as it probably ought to be, then no deceptions or deals are necessary.

The new story-telling

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One of the most interesting developments in the last few years is the ease — and skill — with which some newspaper journalists have taken to multi-media work. (See Michael Rosenblum’s wonderful post about “waiting for the pencil”.) Sean Smith of the Guardian is a shining example, so it’s nice to see that the Royal Television Society has given him an award for his work in Iraq. Thoroughly deserved.

Thanks to Adrian Monck for spotting the award.

The digital journey: how British newspapers are adapting to the online challenge

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Typically thoughtful report by Roy Greenslade, who has been round the editorial floors of the Telegraph, Financial Times and Times.

In a sense, the online revolution is like a train journey without a destination. As soon as one paper arrives at a station that had once appeared to be a terminus, another title has built a new line and sped onwards. Despite the differences, everyone seems clear about the general direction to take towards an otherwise mysterious objective: the future of news-gathering and news delivery is tied to the screen.

For the moment, given the need to keep on printing while simultaneously uploading, it means driving as fast as possible towards a brave new world while keeping the engines running at full power in the old – but still lucrative and popular – world of newsprint.

Inevitably, this split has proved uncomfortable, both in journalistic terms and, seen from the perspective of owners and managers, in financial terms too. In company with editors, they have set the course to reach a single station named “Integration”. It is now clear that the days of binary staffing, with journalists for print and journalists for web, are virtually over. In most offices the initial scepticism about the utility and viability of online news has long since passed…

Farewell, my lovely

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Paul Steiger, the retiring Editor of the Wall Street Journal, has written an interesting valedictory piece — a retrospective view of what’s happened to print journalism during his distinguished career.

On Thursday I’ll pack my last box and take leave of a place where I’ve spent 26 of my 41 years in journalism, including 16 as managing editor of the Journal. (The other 15 years, 1968 to 1983, I was a reporter and then business editor at the Los Angeles Times.) Today, all around me is an industry in upheaval, with slumping revenues and stocks, layoffs, and takeovers of publishers that a decade ago seemed impregnable. Just this month, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. completed its acquisition of Dow Jones & Co., the Journal’s publisher, and real-estate magnate Sam Zell gained effective control of Tribune Co…

MacroMyopia

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Don Dodge has a nice post on an incurable disease which afflicts both mainstream media and the blogosphere…

There is a severe case of MacroMyopia spreading across the blogosphere. Today it is The Death of Email. Yesterday it was Inbox 2.0 – Email meets Social Networks. Macro-Myopia is the tendency to overestimate the short term impact of a new product or technology, and underestimate its long term implications on the marketplace, and how competitors will react.

Straight up and to the right – It is human nature to extrapolate the early success of a “new thing” to world domination, and to the death of the “old thing”. Insert any variable for “new thing” like; Facebook, Twitter, Text Messaging, Open Source, Linux, YouTube…and you can finish the sentence with the death of the “old thing”.

The best of both worlds – In most cases the early innovator of a product or technology wins some early success in a narrow market segment. The big winners come in later by incorporating the new technology into an existing product or service and creating a best of both worlds solution that appeals to a much broader market. I call this the “Innovate or Imitate – Fame or Fortune” scenario…

Lots more where that came from. Good stuff.

James Michaels RIP

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The man who turned Forbes into a great read, is dead. Nice obit in the Economist, which refers to his greatest scoop: he witnessed the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Here’s his report:

‘Bapu (father) is finished’

New Delhi, January 30, 1948: Mohandas K. Gandhi was assassinated today by a Hindu extremist whose act plunged India into sorrow and fear.

Rioting broke out immediately in Bombay.

The seventy-eight-year-old leader whose people had christened him the Great Soul of India died at 5:45 p.m. (7:15 a.m. EST) with his head cradled in the lap of his sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Mani.

Just half an hour before, a Hindu fanatic, Ram Naturam, had pumped three bullets from a revolver into Gandhi’s frail body, emaciated by years of fasting and asceticism.

Gandhi was shot in the luxurious gardens of Birla House in the presence of one thousand of his followers, whom he was leading to the little summer pagoda where it was his habit to make his evening devotions.

Dressed as always in his homespun sacklike dhoti, and leaning heavily on a staff of stout wood, Gandhi was only a few feet from the pagoda when the shots were fired.

Gandhi crumpled instantly, putting his hand to his forehead in the Hindu gesture of forgiveness to his assassin. Three bullets penetrated his body at close range, one in the upper right thigh, one in the abdomen, and one in the chest.

He spoke no word before he died. A moment before he was shot he said–some witnesses believed he was speaking to the assassin–”You are late.”

The assassin had been standing beside the garden path, his hands folded, palms together, before him in the Hindu gesture of greeting. But between his palms he had concealed a small-caliber revolver. After pumping three bullets into Gandhi at a range of a few feet, he fired a fourth shot in an attempt at suicide, but the bullet merely creased his scalp.

From A treasury of great reporting: literature under pressure from the sixteenth century to our own time, edited by Louis L. Snyder, Simon & Schuster, 1949.

All the news that’s fit to Digg

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This is really interesting — a summary by the Pew Research Center of a survey conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

If someday we have a world without journalists, or at least without editors, what would the news agenda look like? How would citizens make up a front page differently than professional news people?

If a new crop of user-news sites — and measures of user activity on mainstream news sites — are any indication, the news agenda will be more diverse, more transitory, and often draw on a very different and perhaps controversial list of sources, according to a new study. The report, released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), compares the news agenda of the mainstream media for one week with the news agenda found on a host of user-news sites for the same period.

In a week when the mainstream press was focused on Iraq and the debate over immigration, the three leading user-news sites — Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us — were more focused on stories like the release of Apple’s new iphone and that Nintendo had surpassed Sony in net worth. The report also found subtle differences in three other forms of user-driven content within one site: Yahoo News’ Most Recommended, Most Viewed, and Most Emailed…

The full report is available here.

This is useful in redressing the balance in the debate about the relationship of user-driven media to mainstream journalism. There’s an assumption that almost anything would be better than the skewed news agendas of mainstream media — that the Jeffersonian ‘marketplace in ideas’ will lead, inevitably, to closer approximations to the truth. This survey, sketchy and inadequate though it is, and Cass Sunstein’s new book, Infotopia: how many minds produce knowledge, (which I’ve been reading) cast some doubts on that comfortable assumption.

Which is a bit distressing, to say the least. It’s always uncomfortable having one’s cherished illusions undermined.

Nick Carr is not in the least distressed by all this, btw. Itr probably confirms what he’s suspected all along.

Rory Cellan-Jones’s report on the survey is here.

The Digger scoops up the Journal

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Well according to this report he has, anyway.

Rupert Murdoch has succeeded with his $5bn (£2.5bn) bid for Dow Jones, owners of the Wall Street Journal, according to a report in The Business.

Negotiations are finished and the board is confident the terms of the deal will be accepted by the Bancroft family, which controls a majority of voting shares in Dow Jones, the Business reported, citing people close to the Dow Jones board.

A formal announcement of the deal is expected next week, The Business reported.

Murdoch’s News Corporation will take over America’s most prestigious financial publisher at the price he originally offered on April 17, when he proposed $60 a share, the magazine said.

He has, apparently, given guarantees of ‘editorial independence’. Ho, ho!