Category: Media

  • The “let’s post stupid comments on the Mail website” movement is still going on, I see

    The story: BAA will have to sell some airports. The comment: well said Kieth of Somerset, definetly should be a UK Ownership, but with Nu Labour and PC Brigade, probably sold to El QUADA

  • Pay-per-click journalism

    Last year, I wrote a column for .net about the increasing importance of clicks – that is, judging the success of something not by how good or bad it is, but by how much traffic it generates. A few weeks ago, the music reviewer from The Herald newspaper went to see My Chemical Romance and,…

  • Frankenwriting

    Slate magazine journalist gets a tip that one of his pieces has been plagiarised. It turns out that it’s not just one piece, and it’s not just him. with the exception of the local events listings, every single item in the June 3-July 10 Bulletin is suspicious. Indeed, I wonder: In purely statistical terms, do…

  • AOL to AOL bloggers: stop blogging (or at least, don’t expect to be paid)

    It seems that AOL’s intrepid army of bloggers has been told to stop posting in order to save money – so some of them are continuing to blog unpaid.

  • Let’s just nuke the planet from orbit

    OK, I know I’m talking about the Daily Mail here, but the comments on this story make me want to kill people. Story first: When Suzanne Richards and Sarah Dobinson decided to sell their £650,000 home, they expected professional service from their estate agents. Instead, they were left feeling ‘insulted and violated’ after a staff…

  • Why I’d buy a dedicated e-book reader if somebody invented a good one

    I’ve just received my monthly threat from the newsagent, and it seems that my newspaper habit – that is, my one daily newspaper and two sunday newspapers – is costing £12.55 per week. Given that nine times out of ten the paper doesn’t turn up until I’ve been up and about for an hour or…

  • Think first, publish later

    Ian Betteridge argues that blogs aren’t as self-correcting as yer Scobles like to claim: Watching the development and correction of stories, there’s something interesting that I’ve always observed. When someone posts something controversial (and wrong) few of the sites which post about that original post also post a correction. And thus begins a classic network…

  • Giles Coren gets angry about sub-editing

    Some writers get rather upset if sub-editors change their copy, as this sweary rant from Giles Coren demonstrates: When you’re winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can’t you hear? Can’t you hear that it is wrong? It’s not fucking rocket science. It’s fucking pre-GCSE scansion. Then again, Roland White has a different…

  • Despicable rags

    Obsolete has written a fantastic post about Robert Murat’s successful libel action against 11 – 11! – newspapers. the truly unprecedented payout to Robert Murat by not just the Express papers but every single one of the daily tabloids with the exception of the Daily Sport, three of the Sunday tabloids and also the Scotsman…

  • “I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours / but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humour…”

    Remember the attempts by Christian Voice to prosecute various people over Jerry Springer: The Opera? And the £90,000 costs awarded against CV’s Stephen Green? It seems Green is asking for some good old-fashioned Christian charity from the very people he tried to prosecute. The money is due to be paid today, but Stephen Green doesn’t…