Newspapers

Newspapers just can’t get enough of this ‘Noo Meejar’ [New Media for Google!]

05/31/2006 by simoncollister 4 Comments

It seems today’s newspapers have gone over-board on new media.

Drew B posts about the FT devoting “millions” of pages to social media. He highlights his favourite article here. Meanwhile, over at the Social Media Report blog (that’s Drew again), a more comprehensive set of links to the FT’s social media worship can be found.

Antony Mayfield’s Open blog has a post about the London Times’ aspirations to become a global newspaper. One of its tactics to achieve this is to supply the world’s biggest newspaper, Japan’s Daily Yomiuri, with content.

In a similar but more exciting move the Guardian announces today that the International Herald Tribune is to take news content from Korean Ohmynews, the citizen journalism website. According to the story the IHT will draw headlines from Ohmynews.

The Guardian also has a front page piece on the singer Sandi Thom who has shot to stardom using only the internet, a webcam…….. oh, and a PR firm. It seems that despite the hype the (rubbish – in my opinion) London-based singer/songwriter has been using a clever manager and a PR firm to create a buzz instead of relying on just the good ol’ intenet like the Arctic Monkeys did….. oh hang on

Interestingly she was found out after bloggers tracked her web presence using Technorati!

And as if that wasn’t enough there’s a G2 feature on YouTube! Phew.

Friday round-up

05/26/2006 by simoncollister 5 Comments

Stuart Bruce has a good post over at his blog. Using the Gunning-Fog test to analyse the readability of copy, Stuart has scored some high-profile PR bloggers (and me!). For the record I scored 9.42 which isn’t bad. Put in perspective The Times scores 10 while The Sun scores 6.

I had hoped to score higher but think I blew it by posting that Daily Mail style rant last Sunday morning!

Keeping with The Times newspaper, on page 2 of today’s edition there is a column of nibs topped and tailed with two stories that caught me eye.

The first nib is headlined ‘Mohamed al-Guerbouzi – an apology’ and contains the sentence:

"The articles [published in July 2005] suggested that he was suspected of planning the [London] bombings and other terrorist atrocities, was linked to al-Qaeda extremists and had disappeared after the Madrid Bombings in 2004."

Guess what? None of the above was actually true. Mr al-Guerbouzi actually lives in London with his family and has managed to avoid becoming involved in international terrorism.

The second story at the foot of the column bears the headline: ‘Press Complaints’:

"A record number of complaints were made to the Press Complaints Commission last year…"

Shock horror!

Where the truth lies…

05/20/2006 by simoncollister 3 Comments

I’ve just sat down to start reading Julia Hobsbawm’s new book, Where The Truth Lies: morality and trust in PR and journalism.

I’m looking forward to a weekend of reading and plan to review the book here too. [DECLARATION: My boss is a friend of Ms Hobsbawm and this is a complimentary copy.]

One thing bothers me though. Call me cynical if you like, but it has just dawned on me there was an awful lot of hoo-hah in the press last month about the validity of Julia’s new PR outfit Editorial Intelligence.

Indeed an open debate raged in the high-brow papers about some of the very issues the book covers. Richard Bailey has some good links on the spat here as does Stuart Bruce there and for some excellent commentary see Philip Young’s post.

Then what happens? One month later Julia’s new book is published…. fortuitous coincidence or deliberate planning?

More to come…

Important date for the diary – 21 April 2006

04/08/2006 by simoncollister Leave a Comment

This week’s issue of The Economist has a full back-page ad for next week’s issue which will contain a special survey of new media. The survey, announced in the periodical’s distinctive white on pillar-box red style, is on sale 21 April 2006.

The ad text reads:

"Blogs, vlogs, metaverses, folksonomies, podcasts. Will new media have as big an effect on business, society and politics as they are having on dictionaries?"

I am particularly excited by this. Economist surveys are usually extremely well-informed and compellingly written and going by the ad it certainly looks as if it will be an in-depth report.

One question worth asking: I haven’t noticed any bloggers I read talking about the survey so I wonder who the survey’s authors have been questioning? Any ideas?

UPDATE: My mistake. In anticipation of the Easter bank holidays I ahve gotten ahead of myself. The Economist new media survey is out on 21 April 2006 – that’s in two weeks time!

Tim Allan bad PR again!

04/03/2006 by simoncollister Leave a Comment

I may have missed the boat on this one… but I certainly didn’t see anything in PR Week so I thought I’d share…

Tim Allan, former media adviser to New Labour and now in charge of Portland PR is coming in for more stick following recent criticism that

Portland

produced anti-union literature for ASDA Wal-mart during recent pay-bargaining.

Private Eye reports that a confidential memo belonging to Allan and containing advice for Sky’s James Murdoch on how the station can ‘ingratiate itself’ (The Eye’s terminology – sue them!) with New Labour was stolen just before Christmas.

It seems that Allan’s solicitors have slapped an injunction on the media preventing them from reporting on the contents of the memo as this would be in breach of Allan’s confidence.

Nothing too untoward in that you might think… but this is, of course, the same Allan who leaked that videotape of John Humphrey’s criticising New Labour to the papers even though Humphrey’s was under the impression the event was a private one!

Some issues about disclosure and ethics here perhaps? Or simply people in glasshouses etc etc etc

Oh yes… I’m not sure how injunctions work, but a simple Google search brought interesting extracts from the memo courtesy of the Guardian!

Where are all the PR trade mags?

03/30/2006 by simoncollister Leave a Comment

Richard Bailey has posted about a new trade title for the PR industry called PR Business. If Richard’s right about it going to CIPR members then I also look forward to my first copy (although their first technology column by Antony Mayfield is already available due to the magic of the ‘blogosphere’).

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that despite the seemingly unstoppable rise of trade mags (with ever-increasingly absurd titles) the PR world seems to be under-serviced.

PR Week is the PR practitioner’s bible but I am constantly bombarded with mailshots trying to flog me other related titles from the Haymarket stable: Campaign, Marketing, er… and some others I forget the names of!

However, I am never really tempted by these other titles… I just don’t feel they’re worth subscribing to from a PR point of view even though there’s always a great offer to be had.

Perhaps the dearth of PR trade titles is down to the fact that knowing how a lot of trade mags run from a PR perspective we aren’t the best audience for publishers to win over!