Is reading this post an elitist activity? Social media may pay lip service to the concept of communities and interactivity, but the comment box at the bottom of the page may really be a members-only club.
Internet use is an elitist activity (Photo: Dots and Spaces, Flickr)
According to William Morris, chairman of the International Council for Press and Broadcasting, a boom in blogging and user-generated content hides the fact that “much of new media is an elite forum”. At this week’s Voices Online conference, organised by the Next Century Foundation, Morris warned of an online “knowledge gap” developing in the Middle East.
Blogging may not be an exact science, but if it was, Paul Staines would surely be its professor. He is the man behind the Guido Fawkes blog, detonator of the “digital dynamite” that was the e-mails between Damian McBride and Derek Draper, and his blog racks up more than 100,000 hits a day.
Paul Staines, who created Guido Fawkes as an "overdeveloped caricature"
At the Voices Online blogging conference yesterday, Staines divulged his top tips for bringing in blog traffic. “You’ve got to make non-mainstream media more mainstream,” he said. “You can’t write about highfaluting boring stuff all the time. You don’t see newspapers only writing about serious things.”
Is hyperlocal the future of news? Seamus McCauley revealed to me yesterday that the company behind the Mail Online and This Is London is developing a new generation of local news sites that will combine citizen journalism, blogging and Facebook-style networking.
Make the news and make friends with hyperlocal sites
McCauley, a strategic analyst at Associated Northcliffe Digital, said during his visit to City University that hyperlocal news is Northcliffe’s “hope for the answer” to the current media crisis. I broke the story in full on Journalism.co.uk, but I am now making the case for Northcliffe to support a hyperlocal website for my own hometown.
This well-travelled Wordle is this blog’s equivalent of a clutch of passport stamps. Drawing on live data from my new FEEDJIT widget, it reveals where in the world visitors to this site have come from during the last 12 hours.
A Wordle of where you are in the world
The United Kingdom and the United States dominate (the latter due in part, I’m sure, to yesterday’s blog about a certain dog), but a steady stream of traffic has also arrived from Italy, Spain and Norway.
Bo, the new First Dog
The newest appointment to the Obama administration has been a long time coming. Covert conversations, visits to a clandestine training centre and even a change of name all preceded this weekend’s White House arrival.
Less than 24 hours after wagging his way into Washington, the latest addition has already been interviewed for his unofficial website and given his own blog by The Telegraph. Six-month-old Bo is now America’s First Dog, and probably the most publicised pooch in the world.
But the presidential puppy has also highlighted the most effective form of promotion for the digital age: strategic product placement. Google Trends data reveals that searches for Bo’s breed, the Portuguese water dog, have increased by more than 30 times in the last four months. After a slight rise in the fourth quarter of 2008, when the dog was first rumoured to have made the Obama’s shortlist, interest soared in February 2009 when Michelle Obama confirmed the family’s decision.
It’s not a good time to be a journalist. We stand accused of writing the world into recession. Jobs and entire news organisations are disappearing around us. Those lucky enough to still have a salary are working longer hours for less money. And yet there are still those of us who refuse to give up on our dreams of making our mark in the media.
Lara King and Alison Battisby at the British Press Awards 2009
Last night, I remembered why. My City colleague Alison Battisby and I attended the British Press Awards as guests of Women in Journalism, and spent the night mingling with Fleet Street’s finest at Grosvenor House. After an evening in the company of some of the most impressive journalists of the decade, it was hard not to be inspired by their sensational scoops and influential investigations.
Over the last three weeks, I have jostled amongst the crowds at a job centre, ventured behind the scenes at a bookies, waved microphones at market traders, sought out a secret millionaire, explored the world of estate agents, lingered in lingerie shops, produced my first podcast, quibbled with QuarkXPress, learned how to ride out a recession and chatted to two of the capital’s funniest comics. Welcome to life on the Hackney Post.
The fruits of our labours at the Hackney Post
It has been described as “a new hyperlocal Twitter-driven newspaper for Hackney in the 21st century” by one reader, and cited as an example that local news is still “pretty alive” by another. The truth is that the Hackney Post is what happens when twenty soon-to-be qualified journalists put their talent to the test as a year of journalism training at City careers towards completion.
You know that spring is in the air when the days are getting longer, the weather is getting warmer, and everyone stops organising social events on Wednesdays. The fifth series of The Apprentice starts tonight, which means forsaking all others for a midweek date with Sir Alan Sugar until June.
Anita Shah gets fired two hours too early by Telegraph.co.uk
I was looking forward to watching the first episode until I made the mistake of turning to Telegraph.co.uk for a news fix this evening. The paper’s Twitter feed directed me towards a bold headline that announced “Anita Shah ‘gutted’ to be fired by Sir Alan”. The story went on to explain that “last night’s episode on BBC One, in which Sir Alan revealed someone had ‘bottled it’ before the cameras had started rolling, saw the hard work start immediately” before giving a blow-by-blow account of the first show.
Which is all very well, except the story was published online almost two hours before the programme was actually screened.
Saturdays are on the verge of overtaking Sundays as my favourite morning of the week. It has nothing to do with the length of the lie-in, the quantity of tea consumed or what’s on T4. Instead, it all rests on what there is to read over those extra cups of Earl Grey.
Six new sections: the redesigned Saturday Times
Thanks to the heady combination of The Observer, the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday, I have always considered the day of rest to be my favourite day of reading material. But since its relaunch in January, the revamped Saturday Times has been giving these Sunday stalwarts a run for their money (and not just because it’s cheaper).
You might have found this blog by searching for journalism. You might have been brought here by my observations on politics, multimedia, the law, public relations or the European Union. But statistically, you probably found it looking for a Lamborghini.
Click me baby one more time: search engines love Spears
That’s right. Despite the hours that have gone into carefully crafted blog posts on everything from Andrew Marr to marmosets, the vehicle most likely to bring traffic to my blog is the Lamborghini Gallardo. I unwittingly parked one in a post about celebrity blogging in December, and since then around 800 visitors to my site got here as a result of searching for the supercar. In second place in the search statistics comes Lucinda Ledgerwood from The Apprentice, and taking a feeble third place is my own name.
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