Spalpeen

Nice to see that the Telegraph continues to concern itself with pertinent issues that very strongly influence the shape of the English nation.

A useless part of the male wardrobe? A useless part of the discussion about the shape of television news in England, more like. Even if I strongly respect Paxman and Snow (and I do!), it’s almost too obvious to see how these guys are taking their eyes off the ball. Maybe in five years Paxman will start blogging about something important (like oh, I dunno: the process behind Newsnight?) and the Telegraph will understand the concept of linking to its sources (Jeremy Paxman has a blog? LINK ME TO IT!).

Right now, talking about ties seems to be the “news world’s” equivalent of blogging about your cat!

I think the bunch of ‘em should take a look at the UK indie music scene. If a bunch of pretentious musicians in their late-teens / early twenties think it’s cool to wear skinny ties straight out of the 70s, then the rest of the “cool” populace will probably come round to that thinking in no short order. A good thing then that people tend not to consider “coolness” an attribute to look for in a newscaster.

The Guardian redesigned its website’s front page the other week. I wrote about how tabloidy it is, but Jeff Jarvis in his Media column put the view across much more effectively today. He talks about news being more of a feed than any other format. Instead of having a homepage with some big, large image pointing to the biggest issue of the day, Jeff suggests that they should redesign around a feed format. Allow people to customize what they see on the homepage. Add video, audio, and text commentary from other sources on the web to add context. Make it collaborative. He cites figures where only 20% of readers come to the front page of the site sites. The rest all read The Guardian through links that were originally collated through feeds and deeper linking on other sites, using RSS or otherwise.

These are all nice ideas, but it’ll take a significant culture change within a paper like The Guardian in order to effect a move away from what editors have always understood: a front page, with a leading story. Unfortunately for newspapers, the days where the newspapers get to decide this story are coming to an end. What makes it all the more depressing is that “All this can be done today. And doesn’t that make the notion of the home page, the web site, and the site sound antiquated and quaint like, oh, a newspaper?”

Jeff’s got it right. The real change that has to come at newspapers is cultural, so it’s rather strange that Jeff’s voice comes from within The Guardian. I hope the old hands on the front page read his articles.