No room left for slow starters

You only get one chance to make a good first impression. It is one of those throwaway lines that litter our lives, particularly in business.
But there is certainly some truth in the cliche.
And it seems to be increasingly the case in the world of television.
TV is still a dominant force in society, but there is little doubt that [...]

Dress like a Mad Man

Apart from researching and writing a couple of newspaper features, my mind has been wandering to adverts over the last few days.
It started with me wondering what the latest was on the Heinz Deli-Mayo TV advert, pulled by the company after 200 people complained about two men kissing in this humorous take on family life.
Apparently, the Advertising [...]

Editors complain about too much choice

Having mulled over the BBC’s plans to increase its local video output online and the less than enthusiastic response of The Newspaper Society for a few days I’m still left with the same question.
Isn’t one of the big plus points of the “digital revolution” the fact that we now have more choice?
So the Society’s attitude would [...]

Still think this is fair and balanced, Mr Dacre?

I must admit I had a moment of “Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?” when Paul Dacre, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission’s Code Committee, defended press coverage of a spate of suicides in South Wales.
The editor of The Daily Mail said although coverage of the deaths had rightly sparked much public debate but that much [...]

Blogging - newspapers; the law; education

Several interesting items scattered around today on all things blogs.
First up, a warning from legal types about legal implications of what you write on a blog.
Only five per cent of internet users are clear on their legal rights and responsibilities when posting comment online, according to new research from law firm DLA Piper.
The journalism and [...]

Blogging in newspapers - the 3Cs still apply

One of my old editors kept banging on about the 3Cs - credibility, credibility, credibility.
If there was one basic mistake in a front-page exclusive splash then that story was ruined in his eyes.
His attitude irritated the hell out of me when I was a reporter because I felt he couldn’t see the bigger picture - [...]

Abandon all hope for journalism

The public’s trust in journalists has dropped significantly in recent years.
Is anyone surprised?
Today has seen a classic example of why the profession is suffering such a bad image.
The Sun splashes a “world exclusive” about twin baby girls abandoned by their ageing parents ”because they were the wrong sex” at a Midlands hospital after being conceived through [...]

Google vs The Belgians

The all-seeing search engine giant Google is facing a £39m damages claim from Belgian newspapers for publishing and storing their content without paying or asking permission.
In 2007, Google lost a lawsuit filed by a number of French-language Belgian newspapers and was forced to remove their content which had been posted on Google News and stored in its search engine [...]

The art of murketing

An interesting Q&A on Eyecube with Rob Walker, prolific marketing writer and commentator for the likes of the New York Times Magazine.
The man who coined the term murketing has released a new book, Buying In. 
As a cynical hack, getting older by the day, there are one or two things he says that my traditionalist journalist brain is fighting [...]

Scandalised by scandle

It has been 24 hours so I’ve decided to stop biting my tongue.
I really wanted to read the blog on The Birmingham Post’s site about the West Midlands Police and Channel 4 Dispatches debacle written by James Treadwell, criminologist at Birmingham City University.
But I kept getting stuck at the headline.
Scandle?
No, really. Scandle!
It has remained up there for [...]