Spalpeen

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!

View Larger Map

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 »

Just got this email from City University’s “Postgraduate Admissions Team”:

“Owing to the number of applications received, we will be unable to contact all candidates invited to interview by the 6^th of March. We aim to be in touch regarding the status of your application by the 20^th of March.”

@MichaelHaddon says “You will need to get used to things like that if you come here for your MA, administration is not the department’s strongpoint!”

I’d be willing to cut some slack to the department here. There’s some evidence that MA courses in the UK have had a massive increase in applications recently, so it’s probably unavoidable. I’m just angry I’ll have to wait another couple of weeks. The suspense is killing me!

This article was originally published in Hullfire, Hull University’s very own magazine. Since they have a horrible web presence, I’m republishing the article here.

The days of journalism taking place in smoke-filled newsrooms by hardened hacks with inky fingers are long gone, if they ever existed in the first place. As a student trying to get into journalism, it’s best to abandon all sense of romanticism about the craft you wish to enter. Journalism can be done by anyone, at any time. All you need is the willingness to look for fresh angles, an ethical perspective that means you’ll always look for and present the truth and the nouse to start a blog and send a pitch to the right commissioning editor at the right publication, at the right time. Continue Reading »

Michael Gallagher, the power house behind some of best Mahalo Daily episodes (check out How to Speak French, “I’m Gonna Git You Spamma!”, and Mahalo Daily’s Comic-Con coverage) and a Cannes Film Festival Short Corner Film Award Winner has launched his sketch show, TotallySketch.

His first show, embedded above, is “Got Sex?”, which features Adam Hann-Byrd and Andrea Rene, who you may recognise from the How to Speak French episode and the Mahalo Vlog Idol competition respectively. It’s really fun. There’ll be a new video every Thursday! Can’t wait until the next one!

In the meantime, do check out Mike’s other short films, the Tre Hardson (feat. Fatlip of the Pharcyde) music video AyYoMyMan which he produced (and I Associate Produced, or “helped fund”), and make sure to rate and subscribe to TotallySketch on YouTube, and follow Michael and TotallySketch on Twitter!