Archive for January, 2008
(Link to today’s important FoxNews exclusive on the Super Bowl here)
Jack Shafer writes today about the burgeoning tabloid tendencies of American websites in a piece on Slate aptly entitled “Fishermen Beat Rare Dolphin to Death“. American’s are particularly responsive (and, it has to be said, its media critics particularly sensitive) to the ways of the tabloid press but it’s not our fault - I promise - we just haven’t had much time to build up an immunity to the charms of humorous sensationalism. In fact, tabloids and their huge black punny headlines are alien to most of the country. Hardly anyone outside of New York reads or cares about the Murdoch’s NY Post - not that you would ever know that living in London. The British media tends to see their own tabloid-tainted reflection in American media and thus over-report and over-emphasize the influence of tabloid media in the States (the Post’s pithy headlines inevitably get disproportionate amounts of coverage on this side of the Atlantic…see here and here).
But, as Shafer notes, American websites have begun to bravely spread the tab-gospel to the rest of the country. And its no surprise, especially on the web where sites can easily fill many niches at once. CNN can be the desitination of choice for both 45 year old professional policy-junkies and 14 year old casual surfers. Unlike newspapers who have a limited number of pages or TV stations who only have so many minutes a day, websites have virtually infinite storage space and so can offer headlines like Watch that hot drink! Airline offers naked flights or Dog Disfigures Boy; Mom Blames Son, Vows To Keep It beside the latest news on the US elections or the violence in Kenya. It also interesting, as an aside, to look at Jonathan Puckey’s amazing website The Quick Brown which tracks headline changes on the FoxNews website. Its incredibly edifying to follow the life of a story as it progresses from a lowly wire pickup with a long, explanatory headline (Major Names in MLB Steriods Report) to a front page phenomenon with a three word shocker (BOYS OF BUMMER). All in real time!
January 31st, 2008
Alistair Campbell’s Cudlipp lecture this week is the latest expression of the reformation movement in British journalism.
The movement has its Martin Luther in John Lloyd, its Calvin in Roy Greenslade, its Wycliffe in Tony ‘feral beasts’ Blair and its Zwingli in Alistair Campbell.
What we need now is a counter-reformation. We need an Erasmus, a Colet, an Ignatius and a Pope Paul III - in other words people who will clean things up from the inside while still retaining positions of power and influence.
Everyone agreed that things were pretty dire in the 16th century church and that corruption and abuse had to be dealt with, just as most of us agree there’s much to be purged in 21st century journalism.
However, I can’t help feeling that our media Lutherans are doomed to failure. Why?
First, none of them are actually running anything at the moment. It is easy to have high principles when you are not trying to entertain 6 million people a day and prevent them going off to watch TV or kick the dog.
Second, there’s nothing that kills journalism faster than a po-faced editor or publisher.
I emphatically do not mean that our media chiefs should be immoral or try any less hard to perform a worthwhile role in society.
But any reform that works will have to come from the inside. In other words it will have to come from the people who today and tomorrow and the next day, have the gifts to produce stories that entertain, entrance and educate millions of people.
That is a special gift. And I am pretty sure that neither Martin Luther nor John Lloyd would claim to have it.
January 30th, 2008
I had to fight my way in with 10 emails spread across the leadership of the NUJ but I did finally luck into a seat (and thank god, there was a twenty person strong rock-concert-like line outside the venue–poor souls) at Saturday’s conference on New Threats to Media Freedom sponsored by and hosted by the National Union of Journalists on Gray’s Inn Road. Let me just say thanks to the NUJ for putting it on, it was a great morning/afternoon, even if it was mighty early for a Saturday. (It was also a chance for me to put my new digital SLR to the test, see photo above and full gallery below for the results…pretty nice camera if I do say so myself).
The highlight was, unsurprisingly, Alan Johnston’s words on his detainment and censorship on war reporting in general. Its hard to pin down but he just sounds so genuine that he is instantly likeable. He betrays no trace of bitterness about his ordeal, and you get no sense of exploitation or that he is ‘cashing in’ on his newfound celebrity. More importantly, he is just plain charming: after the panel, an audience member asked Johnston if he had prayed during his kidnapping, here is how he responded to a question that felt for me too intrusive and not in the spirit of the morning:
I wasn’t praying at the time so I didn’t feel right starting because of the situation. I’m sure God would have understood but….
Its not an answer anyone expected but it was much appreciated, and genuinely funny.
Other Issues Explored:
- Campaigning vs. Informing - where do journalists draw the line? Is journalism meant to crusade for specific policy changes or is its role to reach for ‘truth’ and ‘objectivity’
- Churnalism - a new(ish) term used to describe the plight of jobbing hacks forced to churn out 15 stories a day giving them no time to check facts or develop sources
- Power of Editors - Peter Wilby (who, incidently, was most dynamic speaker of the entire conference) says editors don’t have enough power, that in any editorial meeting, its the head of marketing that holds all of the cards
- Murdoch - Wilby, as the resident Murdoch expert, also gave a little report on his burgeoning influence on the world’s media saying basically that Murdoch is bad (and that no one really believes Rebekah Wade) but not as bad as some. In fact, he would be mid-table in a league table of media owners.
January 29th, 2008
With great aplomb and with references to Gutenberg, Sebastian Brandt and The First Law of Technology, John Naughton’s Observer column today concludes that the web is changing the way young people read.
He quotes an exciting report from the University of London that says our young are becoming:
‘promiscuous, diverse and volatile.’ ‘Horizontal’ information-seeking means ‘a form of skimming activity, where people view just one or two pages from an academic site then “bounce” out, perhaps never to return.
Sagely, he continues with a prediction:
the universe of linear exposition, quiet contemplation, disciplined reading and study - is imploding, and we don’t know if what will replace it will be better or worse.
Okay, so I am teasing. Not John Naughton personally, whose column I like and who sounds like a fascinating, clever and attractive person if you go to his website, but the donnish caste of mind that occasionally leads to saying some very obvious things … well, a little portentously.
Of course people (not just young people) don’t read on the web like they do in print. Having an academic report that says web reading is superficial sounds every bit as startling as a report that says sleeping is horizontal.
People have always skimmed some things and carefully read others. We used to riffle through reference books, press clippings, cookery books or cupboards full of old maps. Now we just go to Google. But for Ulysses (John’s favourite novel) we need a book.
Nor do I see the implosion of reading and quiet contemplation among the young. The young that I know read voraciously. Fiction sales are up and up. More papers and magazines are printed every week than ever before in the history of the universe. Somebody must be reading all this dead wood.
I think, down here in the real world, the age of Gutenberg is alive and very well.
January 27th, 2008
I wanted to know how our Sunday paper - The Observer - struck an intelligent 16-year-old. So today I found the required teenager and confined her to the kitchen table with a pen and paper. She drew a line down the middle of the paper. One side was headed “like” and the other “don’t like”.
It wouldn’t be worth mentioning here, had the result not been dominated by design.
I am always preaching the astonishing increase in the power of visual communication since I have been in newspapers. It has gone from not mattering very much, to mattering more than anything — in under 20 years. One very senior publisher said to me a few months back: “All the papers have pretty much the same stuff in them these days. The only thing that distinguishes them is the design”.
Right at the top of the list of our teenager’s likes was the design of The Observer. She liked the strong section titles and the clarity of the organisation of the paper. She liked the sans font for the display text. She liked the expansive, confident photography on the section fronts.
“The whole look is clear and modern without seeming frivolous or gaudy”. Particular praise was heaped upon the strong use of colour: the colour rules across the tops of the pages and colour type for the quotes. As for navigation, she liked the large page numbers which make it easier to find the desired place.
As for the reading matter, she was most impressed by the Observer Magazine. “The articles are all good - original and not too dark and serious. I like Art Attack and Show & Tell and First Person. Above all I liked Fashion and My Favourite Outfit because they are not telling you what to wear, which is usually boring and annoying, but showing different and individual styles.”
Among other articles that caught the teenage eye was the piece about cellphone novelists in the New York Times section.
Just about the only thing our focus grouper did not like was another design point. “Why are some of the section titles designed differently from others? Sport has dotted rules, Review has lines and Business/Media is completely different. This is pointless and most annoying!”
Note to self: we at Shakeup Media must get more imaginative at using colour.
January 27th, 2008
The Independent launched their long-awaited website redesign last night and, on first glance, I found it underwhelming. I applaud the attempt at catching up after years of digital foot dragging (and I’ll be damned if they dont do a half-decent job of it too…the new pages are jammed packed with every modern web feature you could imagine, most popular, comments, RSS, sharing, even a music store). It’s too bad though, that the pages feel so cluttered and disorganized, like an obsession to prove their web credentials has clouded any thoughts about the end user experience.
Most disappointing for me is that the site doesn’t feel like the newspaper. It has none of the trademark panache or the design and editorial consistency that has made The Independent print product so admirable. But, this is no surprise since, as the always spot-on Martin Stabe notes, they are using basically the same templates as their northern cousin, The Irish Independent. In any case, to my eye, it seems like a unsuccessful stew of the biggest news sites in the market–the menu from the Times, the blue headline color from the NY Times, the beige lines from the Guardian and so on and so on.
But I hate when people talk bad about work and don’t offer any concrete suggestions. There is nothing more annoying than a whining good-for-nothing. Well, I am good for something–see below for my take on independent.co.uk…I think its quite good, what do you think? Click here to see the design full size.
Websites aren’t all about features and bells and whistles, they need the same sort of analytical design and editorial thinking as newspapers. The page needs to be abundantly clear, completely decipherable in one glance. The new Independent site design is a jumble.
I attempted in my little demo design to clear a path for users. I used colors more strategically so they mean something and so the site feels cleaner in general. I made a bigger deal of the editor’s choice feature, its a good idea and in large part the basis of The Independent brand–who else has enough confidence in their editorial prowess to put a single story on the front page. The newspaper tells you every day what the most important story in the world is and their website should too.
The most important change is a sense of consistency. Each feature is demarcated with the same device, additional stories are marked with the same icon, main stories use the same font for their headlines, and there is a single color palette that is stuck to religiously.
I was careful to be realistic about the design too, you will note my page contains the same basic features (minus a few extraneous things like the weather and front page photo) and the same number and size of ads.
Anyway, now at least no one can say I didn’t do my bit towards making the web a better place. Let me know what you think….
January 24th, 2008
Our man in South Carolina (ok, ok, my dad–see photo below) went to yesterday’s Martin Luther King rally in the streets of Columbia, the state capital and, more importantly, my hometown and reports a genial but rather inspiring scene (he also took that nice picture of the State House):
The preliminary speeches lasted for ~ 1 1/2 hours but it seemed longer because it was colder that hell, below freezing with a little wind. In spite of the cold, the crowd was incredibly polite and in very good spirits. The confederate flag people were also there…pitiful group …..they were ignored by everyone. The introductory speeches lambasted SC for being last in most everything including recognizing the MLK holiday, education, health care, etc. The candidates were given 10 min to speak and were extremely polite and complementary to each other (though Hillary and Obama were at each others’ throats later in the day at the debate. It sounded like an exchange from middle school.) They all gave excellent speeches. I personally thought Hillary’s was the best. She talked about MLK’s legacy and was, thankfully, not in “vote for me” stump speech mode, she was somewhat moving. I do think she had no choice given that she was slightly in trouble because of the (basically manufactured) MLK controrversy and so forth. Edwards gave more of a stump speech……and Obama was slick and tried to give people a vision. All the candidates were favorably, even lovingly received. I also met a cool Labrador retriever there.
It was apparently quite an event, the normally quiet Main St. was jammed full of media and on lookers. It made for some strange but moving scenes, gospel choirs, a huge and welcome NAACP presence, palm trees in freezing weather (see picture if you don’t believe me), and more media than the whole state has seen all year. The most interesting thing about my dad’s report is that Hillary was so inspiring. For me, this campaign, has always come down to a battle of two candidates defined by their relative strengths: Obama is a visionary and inspiring speaker, he specializes in spine tingles; Clinton is more an analytical debater, full of practical knowledge that she accesses with incredible speed. To hear that she is improving her skills in the dark art of inspirational speaking is bad news for Obama…
January 24th, 2008
A long time ago now, we did a presentation at Charlie Beckett’s LSE journalism thinktank POLIS about the future of journalism on the web (take a look at our funny little Powerpoint presentation comparing new media and Moses). During this presentation, I advocated quite strongly for an all in one device, a sort of mash-up of all the things that we carry around today (phone, mp3 players, newspapers, magazines, notebooks, pens, etc). Back then, in the PI era (pre-Iphone) it seemed sort of radical and my prediction didn’t go down very well, possibly because the technology I was talking about seemed a little far-fetched for non-gadget followers. Now, with the release of the first consumer product that takes real advantage of thin, flexible electronic paper, I hope my future seems a little more possible. Sure, its a year late (here’s a link to the slightly cooler prototype) but the Phillips Readius is slick, small, a mobile phone and, crucially, has a very very legible screen that is bigger than the device itself (5″). The guy who made it thinks it he can increase the screen size by almost 50% and make it color in 5 years. Of course, its probably about 10 years down the road (these things always are) but I am sure it will be worth the wait. Also, see Richard’s posting on e-paper last week.
January 22nd, 2008
No sooner do I flit over to Spain than the 2008 action begins on the free newspaper front. Ryan covered the news up to Friday excellently well in his recent blog. However we can’t let Peter Preston get away with his Observer column today without a riposte.
Peter’s sagacity is great, so he will command respect when he says, as he does today, that the current cannibalisation of the British newspaper industry by the free papers Metro, London Lite and The London Paper is stupid. He believes that Associated loses more money on Lite and The Standard than it makes on Metro and also that News International is leaking revenue on The Sun partly because of The London Paper, without which we very probably would not have a London Lite. In other words, can all three of them! Then two great newspaper companies a) save a ton of cost and b) see The Sun and The Standard making better (or at least some) profits.
Here are some reasons why I think he is wrong.
- He seems to be saying ‘let the competition cease’ so that two great newspaper companies can make even more money. With 2007 profits at DMGT of £322m and at 2007 operating income at Newscorp of $4.45 billion there seems no reason to discourage competition.
- Despite fashionable disdain, people like London Lite, The London Paper and Metro. You can’t remove papers that more than 3 million people a day read. If you did other papers would immediately spring up in their place. Each and every one has a bigger circulation than the Observer, P. Preston’s paper. The Observer has been at it since December 1st 1791 and makes a loss. Metro has been going for a mere nine years this March and is not only handsomely profitable but the fourth biggest daily paper in Britain - an amazing achievement.
- Advertising revenue, which supports the frees of course, may be looking thin at the start of 2008. But the weakness is in classified which is migrating to the web. National newspaper display advertising has been far stronger - up by around 6% year on year in the (admittedly not super-recent) latest available figures from the Advertising Association. And what looks thin today will look very different when the cycle starts to recover again.
- Britain has the lowest penetration of free papers of any major economy in Europe except Germany, which hints at the general direction that things will go in print over the next 10 years.
Free papers are here to stay, make no mistake. They won’t disappear just to make life easier for their paid-for cousins. Publishers who are prepared to lose money on them in the short term because they see a strong future for them in the long term are surely right.
January 20th, 2008
Clearly Richard is a genius. He is in Barcelona right now (on reconnaissance for his “moderator” gig at the Disruptive Thinking conference put on by Art Center and ESADE in March), otherwise so you can be assured that he would force me to erase that claim. But, consider all the recent hub-bub about a national newspaper going “free”:
1)The FT is convinced that “tumbling” circulation at the red tops is going to push one or both of the top tier papers (The Sun and Mirror) into the free category
2) The Guardian reported yesterday that The Independent (owner of similarly tumbling circulation) is “mulling” a free edition. Editor Simon Kelner retorted:
“It’s utter rubbish,” Kelner told MediaGuardian.co.uk. “And I think it’s shameful journalism on the part of Guardian Media that you present unsubstantiated gossip as news.”
Aside: Its easy to sympathize with Kelner’s point. Both reports are based mainly on interviews with outside consultants or “analysts”. The FT’s report in particular is sourced, seemingly wholy, on comments from Douglas McCabe of Enders who, according to Enders themselves specializes in online publishing has never worked at a national paper (which is not to say, of course, that he is not linked in or that his predictions are inaccurate).
But back to the point at hand. Richard made the argument last year in a column for the Guardian that big papers might be better off going free and his argument still makes just as much sense now as it did then (take a look, basically its all about the trade off between circulation revenue and circulation rise). But the interesting thing for me is the lingering negative connotation of going “free”. Andy Taylor’s, head of press at Carat, comments to the Guardian are particularly revealing:
“I think it would compromise the editorial integrity and the Independent’s current standard”
Its easy to see how, in the context of a London full of free papers specializing in recycled celebrity news, these negative connotations could emerge but it isn’t right to say that just because a paper is free that its editorial integrity or quality is necessarily compromised. And the economics support it, just ask genius man Richard.
January 18th, 2008
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