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• 08.29.09
  It’s when the BBC morphs itself into a Factory of the Written Word.. that’s when Murdoch Jnr hits a large nail on the head. General, Journalism | (7)

  As you watch the tide of indignation that threatens to wash over the Murdoch clan this weekend, I can't help feeling a touch of sympathy for James Murdoch. Because in certain aspects, he is right. And some of what he is saying is long over-due. And, I think, the danger is that we can get too carried away in our defence of all things Auntie; as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Equally, because Murdoch Jnr's speech was made at a 'TV' festival, it is easy to assume that the two sides of the argument can be encapsulated by casting the division ...

  Tagged: BBC, James Murdoch, MyFootballWriter, The Guardian
  
• 08.04.09
  Whilst we all fiddle and wait for the BBC to recognise that a link economy is a two-way street, so Rome and all its media works continue to burn… General, Journalism, MFW | (0)

  In amidst the general pantomime of my life, consciously or not this blog has ended up taking something of a back-seat over the last two weeks. In part, there's a lot going on. Tis the start of a new football season for www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and www.addiply.com continues to take us all on some interesting, if time-consuming paths. But in other ways, I'm increasingly beginning to think that there's not a lot going on. Anywhere. Other than some deep and discomforting navel-gazing amongst some pillars of the global journalistic community... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/5408 ... all of which might explain why Mr Rusbridger was quite so keen to emphasize ...

  Tagged: BBC, FT.com, Sly Bailey, The Guardian
  
• 07.23.09
  Why Michael Fabricant MP might have just begun to wake up to the challenges we all face; GMG and Mr Rusbridger very much included. Advertising, General, Journalism | (3)

  Courtesy of Martin Moore and those fine people at the Media Standards Trust, I forayed up into the big, bad Smoke yesterday afternoon to sit and listen to Alan Rusbridger's lecture on 'Why Journalism Matters...' at the British Academy. It was, as you might expect, an interesting experience. Not least for the manner in which it was reported and the emphasis that was missing from the written word. This was The Guardian's report of their illustrious leader in action... http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/22/local-news-scrutiny-future-journalism The 'offending' passage is this one... "This bit of journalism is going to have to be done by somebody," Rusbridger said. "It makes me worry ...

  Tagged: Addiply, Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian, www.TheLichfieldBlog.co.uk
  
• 04.17.09
  If you can’t be hyper-national or pan-global and you don’t do what you do in TS10 in NR14, you’re in trouble. You don’t ‘fit’ easily into a Digital Britain. General, Journalism | (1)

  For a fair while now, I've kind of worked on the basis that this web world of ours will go one of two ways... you'll either be hyper-national a la The Telegraph, The Guardian, et al... ... or you'll be hyper-local. A la Linda at www.darwenreporter.com And James at www.towcesternews.co.uk And there won't be too much left in-between. As there isn't where the Rocky Mountain News once lived. http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=56 How The Telegraph, The Guardian et al fund their hyper-national stroke global efforts, I've no idea. Not any of my business. I'm a bottom of the pond dweller; not a water lily. But clearly that's where ...

  Tagged: DarwenReporter.com, Northcliffe, The Guardian, Trinity Mirror
  
• 03.20.09
  EveryBlock was brilliant. But we have to aim higher than data; cos in my little, provincial world, punters don’t do data. They do people. And they do stories for ‘when they get a mo… General, Journalism | (1)

  I've always been a big fan of Mr Holovaty. Big fan. What he did with ChicagoCrime.org broke the mould; he thought network; not silo. And he thought hyper-local; what's the news that affects me on a daily basis...? It's the news that the deli on the corner of OurBlock has just failed its Hygene Inspection. It was smart; cos it drove free content down to block level. Any block. Or, indeed, EveryBlock. All he ever needed - IMHO - was to find the little bit of cash anyone needs to fund a part-time, hyper-local 'beat' reporter to go and ask said deli owner ...

  Tagged: Adrian Holovaty, EveryBlock, The Guardian
  
• 03.17.09
  For The Scott Trust the question has to be how do we ever square this profits circle? How do we be both hyper-local silo and hyper-national network? General, Journalism | (1)

  In many ways, it is none of our business. In other ways, however, it is very much our business. It is after all 'our' business that the NUJ and the Scott Trust are now fighting over as two tribes go to war in the suburbs of Manchester. http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=43350&c=1 The vote of no confidence in the eventual and spiritual owners of the soon-to-be-shredded newsroom of the Manchester Evening News makes for very uncomfortable viewing - not least for the numbers involved. It is the savagery of the cuts at an institution widely presumed to be less enslaved to the God of Wad than most that ...

  Tagged: Clay Shirky, MEN, The Guardian
  
• 03.11.09
  So what would a Guardian OpenPlatform do for me? Well I’ll have a BMW ad please, Alan, and you can have a Hatters match report by way of return… Advertising, Journalism, MFW, MLW | (0)

  As anyone who has ever had the misfortune to sit through one of my flip-chart scribble shows... Paul and Co at JEECamp, two boys from Barclays, six people at www.2gether08.com and four people in a Guardian office in Farringdon Road among them... I'm a fairly simple soul. I do all my scribbles on the back of the nearest beer mat and/or fag packet. And I'm still, basically, a provincial football hack at heart. The day job is www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity. And one thing I will never be is a techie. Don't ask me how it works; all I want to know is whether it actually ...

  Tagged: Addiply, BBC, MEN, MyFootballWriter.com, MyLocalWriter.com, The Guardian
  
• 11.17.08
  Courtesy of How-Do, it is the smallest of pebbles. Where the ripples lead, however, will be fascinating to watch… General, Journalism | (0)

  I've no idea if this will ever see the light of day. It is, however, worth a ponder. http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2008/11/17/guardian-cities-local-sites-for-local-cityfolk/ Worth treating as tiny pebble and throwing into the shrinking pond that is the UK provincial newspaper industry and trying to imagine where the ripples might lead... Clearly GMG have been happily working that Manchester beat for years. The Manchester Evening News was just AN Other city evening paper - just a bigger version of the Trinity-owned Newcastle Chron, the Johnston-run Sheffield Star, the Northcliffe-managed Bristol Evening Post, Archant's Norwich Evening News. Everyone plundered their own little circulation fiefdoms with a passion; everyone knew whose ...

  Tagged: Archant, Johnston Press, Northcliffe, The Guardian, TrinityMirror
  
• 08.18.08
  If you want to see how scarce traditional media is becoming, park yourself in a Carrow Road Press box this season – or in Berlin this autumn General, Journalism, MFW | (1)

  Apologies. For those of you who aren't big fans of the Football League Championship, what follows may be of scant interest. It may, however, be worth hanging in there - if only for an insight into just how scarce traditional media is becoming. As we've long maintained, that - in theory - is where the value remains; where media is scarce; beyond the 'gatekeeper'; to those places where not 'everybody' of Clay Shirky's fame can get to. http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=53 This Saturday and it was Norwich's first home game of the new season. They haven't, in fairness, been pulling up too many trees of late; they are ...

  Tagged: Berlin, Blackpool Gazette, Daily Telegraph, Eastern Daily Press, Frontline Club, Lancashire Evening Post, MyFootballWriter, Norwich Evening News, The Guardian
  
• 06.20.08
  Always interesting the different perspectives we all bring to bear. From atop of the water lily, it might look agile; from the bottom of the pond, it just looks rather more than hopeful. General, Journalism | (0)

  Interesting to read the Buzzmachine/Guardian take on the Huffington Post's one-editor strong invasion of Chicago... http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/06/19/arianna-invades-chicago/ It's a move that we've already walked once round the block. http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=92 And I'm sure we'll go round the block again with it. But, even now, I'm not sure that if I was given one word to describe it I would plump for 'agile'. But then the eminent Ms Bell comes at it from sat atop a water-lily. Me? I've long been pond-life and proud. So, in fairness, perhaps from her perspective it is agile. It's a nimble little move that an organisation of GMG's ilk would love to pull ...

  Tagged: Chicago, Huffington Post, The Guardian
  

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