Spalpeen

I liveblogged Monday’s episode of The One Show, for Charlie Brooker’s new show, “You Have Been Watching“.

The One Show, BBC One, MONDAY, 29/6/09

0.01
One second in and I’m already cringing. Ewww mock acting.

0.02
Wait isn’t that the guy from that Money show with the Shark graphic?

0.21
I COUNT FOUR TOM JONES PUNS IN FIRST 21 SECONDS OF THE SHOW.

0.22
I don’t think this is the show for me.

0.43
BBC Presenters should be banned from saying “sex”.

1.27
I feel sorry for Tom Jones. This show has made me feel sorry for Tom Jones.

3.06
Alright, now I’ve stopped cringing, and started yawning. Stalking IRL is sooo 90s.

5.22
The interview with the grieving Mum features some quite poignant and touching footage. If only it wasn’t directly preceded by shots of Tom Jones with his top off.

8.00
Tom, to his credit, makes up a convincing story about an imaginary stalker in an effort to help out the producers a bit.

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Sometimes American sincerity can go a little too far.

In response to an email from the NUJ New Media email list (the general gist being that a) why should NightJack want to remain anonymous, since running a blog is about getting readers, right? and b), that NightJack should have expected to have his anonymity busted at some point) I wrote some thoughts at 8AM on the train to London. Here’s what I wrote:

I’d question whether every blogger’s primary intention is for people to read what they are writing. Especially when you’re talking about someone working within a high profile organisation who may have gripes about his work. How many of us have been in a job that is frustrating for organisational or bureacratic issues? All of us. However, that doesn’t mean it’s justifiable for every individual to start an anonymous blog about their employer.

Say you’re a call centre employee working in London on minimum wage. You’re working for a private company, so no public money is subsidising your work, and you’ve probably signed some form of non-disclosure agreement about information you procure at work. There’s very little justifiable reason for you to start an anonymous blog decrying the organisation that you work for.

Now, say that same organisation starts paying you less than minimum wage, stops paying for overtime, and begins employing people under 16. You have a huge incentive then to reveal this information. Its not hard to see why someone in this situation who has no easy way out might start an anonymous blog. They certainly would not be doing it for wide readership (at first). Most likely they would want to experience a sense of catharsis, and connect with other people in similarly hopeless situations (both of which are true in the case of NightJack).

I’d also suggest that there are some very obvious reasons why someone in this hypothetical situation would not go to a journalist or alert authorities to the situation. One, they may not have or known an easy way to get in touch with a journalist. Two, they may not trust a journalist, even if they do know a way to get in touch with one. The same reasons apply regarding the proper authorities.

If we expect privacy from the prying eyes of the Government, then surely individuals who do a public service and reveal information in the public interest should be able to expect some privacy from the News organisations that claim to act in their interest! We may not be able to expect the courts to agree with this principle, but I’d have thought a newspaper like The Times would understand and accept it!

On the point about the distinction in privacy between publishing on your private blog and on someone else’s server (or via a journalist), I think this is a clear case of how the law has failed to keep up with technology and society. We didn’t have such a widespread network of “self-publishers” ten years ago: now we do. So the rights to privacy that anonymous sources enjoy should unquestionably be extended to individual anonymous bloggers.

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I’m considering distributing these as leaflets outside 1 Virginia Street tomorrow during my lunch break. Anyone want to join me? Let me know if you think I should change the leaflet at all.

This story on how The Times needlessly “outed” the anonymous blogger NightJack, makes me absolutely mad with rage. Read this excellent Guardian article on why this is a ridiculous ruling, and why The Times is absolutely wrong to be chasing up anonymous bloggers like this.

What takes the cake for me is that the actual article that does the “outing”, features an entirely ridiculous pre-justification for it. I quote the first few paragraphs:

“”If the Police arrive to lock you up, say nothing. You are a decent person and you may think that reasoning with the Police will help. Wrong.” It is not quite the advice you would expect to receive from a serving police officer.

But Detective Constable Richard Horton, of Lancashire Constabulary, gave readers of his NightJack blog the full benefit of the knowledge that he had gained from 17 years in the force as to how to extract oneself from the grasp of the long arm of the law.”

This stuffy, fake outrage is utterly ridiculous. One of the first things a lawyer tells their client after they are arrested is do not tell the Police anything. For the varied and numerous reasons why no individual should ever reveal anything to a Police officer, watch this absolutely excellent video, where you will see both a Law lecturer and a real, live, United States Police Officer tell a crowded room of students why you shouldn’t speak to Police Officers, even if it’s for something as minor as a traffic stop.

This little tidbit of knowledge should be shouted from the rooftops! For NightJack to reveal it is a) justifiable in the sense that anyone in the know already knows it and b), does a civic service to anyone who’s ever been arrested.

Does anyone have an archive of the blog?

My brain has made some odd connections lately, so I noted them down. Note: this may be conclusive evidence of my insanity.

Watching the extract of Archbishop Rowan Williams’ Hay Festival “all smiles” speech (”everyone is bustling around, talking cheerfully and in an upbeat sort of way. It’s like being on an ocean liner where all the staff are talking brightly and smiling at you rather too cheerfully and you think ‘what’s wrong?’“) made me think of the news. In a very literal sense, TV anchors and newreaders on certain channels (not all!) give off horribly disconcerting vibes with their constant smiles. Just switching over to BBC London News is enough to witness this.

Armando Iannucci’s rather excellent documentary on Milton’s Paradise Lost hit on the part where Eve eats the apple in Paradise Lost: “it’s the most momentous moment in history according to this poem, and yet its given and delivered in the barest of lines: ’she plucked, she ate’”. My mind managed to connect this to the MPs expenses story, where this one momentous event has revealed the attitudes of dozens of MPs towards the public, and has finally given a great mandate for reform. The actual event is meaningless: it is only the enabler. The real news is the change. Instead, “the news” has dwelled on the scandals to the point of absurdity, without deciding to move on from questions about manure and chandeliers to real questions about what reforms should be made.

Finally, another brain connection came between the end of Paradise Lost, and the final line of Eyes Wide Shut. “The epic religious verse of Heaven and Hell and War and Battle: that all disappears. What we’re left with are these bare words: ‘they hand in hand, wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way’. To me, the bare word at the end of Eyes Wide Shut directly connects with the end of this epic poem. “Fuck” was all that was needed. A very realist ending in both accounts!

Journo-activists haven’t learnt much from previous global catastrophes. Even with a report in hand saying that 300,000 people a year are dying from climate change, there will be no popular outrage. Why? Because these people don’t have a face, and most of them are from third world countries.

To get Governments to really makes changes on climate change, there needs to be a highly specific person or group of people who are directly affected by climate change in a significant way.

This exact scenario played out with nuclear testing in 1950s, with the Daigo Fukuryū Maru. This was the boat that was contaminated by radioactive fallout after the Castle Bravo nuclear test. The people on the boat were subject to large radiation doses, and fell very ill, with some of the crew dying of their exposure. It led to international outrage, which led to the Partial Test Ban Treaty, influential novels (On the Beach) being published and a general public that was aware of the dangers of continuing with these horrible tests. Before this, misinformation by the US Government was enough to downplay the need for such an agreement.

The media has shown in the last month or two that it is extremely partial to a face on a story. From Jade Goody, to the Gurkhas, to MPs expenses, to the bloody economy, there’s always a victim or a protagonist behind the story. Climate change needs its own Jade, or Lumley, or Duck House, or Goodwin.

Until the media becomes truly utilitarian in its coverage — never have so many people been affected by so big an event — we’re going to need cynical solutions to a cynical press.

O2 follows iPhone success with deal for next must-have gadget by Richard Wray in The Guardian

“Stocks of the device are limited, however, which is why gadget fans outside the US will have to wait several months before it becomes available.”

True, stocks of the device are likely to be limited, but since the Palm Pre is a CDMA device, it’ll need to be converted to GSM and go through all the different approval processes for different countries. See also: the iPhone, which took 5 months to come to the UK after its US launch.

“It also has an eye-catching way of recharging: rather than being plugged in, it has to be placed on what Palm calls its Touchstone and charges through magnetic induction.”

Touchstone is an optional and expensive extra. It doesn’t have to be charged on the pad. The base model comes with a USB charging cable.

“The new version [of the Blackberry Storm] does away with one of the original device’s most annoying features – SurePress, which required the user to press down the screen in order to type or select icons – and opts instead for a traditional touchscreen feel.”

This is a bit touch and go, but isn’t the addition of tactility to a touchscreen a good thing? I wouldn’t be surprised if the Storm’s implementation sucked though (I’ve never used one).

The other month I wrote a post about The Guardian’s poor linking practices. I’ve since heard that this issue has been raised internally at some level, but haven’t heard the results of this yet. Anyway, the issue hasn’t gone away, so I’m not going to stop writing about it.

Here’s a few more examples, similar to the ones I reported on last month:
-Note the link to The Telegraph’s homepage in the first paragraph. Rather than a link to the article that the sentence is directly addressing, there’s a generic link to the Telegraph homepage.
-No link to the house on Google Maps (even though the image in question isn’t there anymore).
-One internal link in an article thousands of words long. Not good enough. Where’s the link to Gawker’s amazing videos from inside Scientology?

The Guardian is getting better (see: a link to a press release, direct links to bank homepages), but they’re not quite there yet.

And actually, the issue about linking goes deeper than simply a lack of links to organisations. The Guardian shouldn’t simply be linking to organisations that it’s writing about (although that would be a good first step). For an idea of what I mean, take this article featuring an interview with The Wire creator David Simon.

About halfway through, there’s a sentence mentioning how David and his collaborator Ed Burns spent time hanging around rather inconspicuously on “the corner of Monroe and Fayette in west Baltimore.” My immediate thought here was to look up this exact location on Google Maps, and throw up the Google Street View service. Seeing the *exact corner* that Burns and Simon were hanging out on adds immense value to the article! So why the hell wasn’t there a direct link to this corner in the article? It took me 30 seconds to find it, copy the URL, and dump it in here. Here, I’ll even embed it!

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The Guardian has a huge staff of writers, rewriters, editors, subeditors, resubeditors (yes, I’m making up words here), so why can’t they add a bleeding hyperlink?

Disclaimer: I love love love The Guardian. I’m only writing this because I want to improve their product!

burning paper from the last 10 years of my life by The Shifted Librarian on Flickr

Some commentary on David Carr’s article, United, Newspapers May (Could, Possibly, Might, Will Hopefully, With Crutches) Stand. I’d like to rename it “United, Newspapers Will (More Likely) Fall.”

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Back when I was a young media reporter fueled by indignation and suspicion, I often pictured the dark overlords of the newspaper industry gathering at a secret location to collude over cigars and Cognac, deciding how to set prices and the news agenda at the same time.

It probably never happened, but now that I fear for the future of the world that they made, I’m hoping that meeting takes place. I’ll even buy the cigars.

Got news for ya’ David, even the non-smoking newspaper men ain’t meeting anymore.

Even casual followers of the newspaper industry could rattle off the doomsday tick-tock: a digitally enabled free fall in ads and audience now has burly guys circling major daily newspapers with plywood and nail guns. The Rocky Mountain News is gone, The San Francisco Chronicle is on the bubble, and dozens of others are limping along on the endangered list.

Including the very paper that this column appears in.

Magazine and newspaper editors have canceled their annual conferences (good idea: let’s not talk to one another). But perhaps someone can blow a secret whistle and the publishers and editors could all meet at an undisclosed location.

Alright, so you saw that link about the newspaper people not meeting. My bad. Maybe for your proposed secret meeting they could try emailing each other?

My fantasy meeting goes something like this: a rump caucus could form where the newspaper industry would decide to hold hands and jump off the following cliffs together on the following actions.

No more free content. The Web has become the primary delivery mechanism for quality newsrooms across the country, and consumers will have to participate in financing the newsgathering process if it is to continue. Setting the price point at free — the newspaper analyst Alan D. Mutter called it the “original sin” — has brought the industry millions of eyeballs and a return that doesn’t cover the coffee budget of some newsrooms.

Unfortunately printing information on paper don’t seem to be selling either. And as far as I can tell, internet articles behind paywalls don’t seem to sell either.

The big threat would be that newspapers could lose the readers they have, lots of them. The mitigating factor is that a lot of those readers aren’t paying anyway. And keep in mind that people are already paying for quality content all over the Web: The Wall Street Journal, Consumer Reports, The Arkansas Gazette. Tiered Web access — from a bare-bones free product to a rich, customized subscription — could be among the solutions.

Isn’t part of the problem that newspapers seem only want to churn out one-product-fits-all? Since when have newspapers cared about who the hell I am? This article doesn’t even allow comments. How are they going to customise anything to suit my needs? (by the way, any information that does get revealed through these “customized subscriptions” will end up being free anyway.) [insert something about the internet destroying boundaries to information/mp3s/movies]

No more free ride to aggregators. Google announced that it would begin selling ads against Google News, with almost no financial accommodation to the organizations that generate that news. The book industry — of all Luddites — has extracted cash from Google, as did the wire services. Google, The Huffington Post and Newser have built their audiences and brands on other people’s labors. Continue Reading »