Journalism blog mash-up 2

[WannabeHacks] Are newspaper mergers the future of journalism?

Thu, 31 May 2012 07:00:52 GMT

You may have seen yesterday that there are some pretty big changes ahead for The Mirror. The current editors of the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror (Richard Wallace and Tina Weaver) have been fired and will be replaced by

[David Higgerson] Going up, going down: The end of the of the football season in newspaper front pages

Wed, 30 May 2012 20:56:11 GMT

Nobody covers a football club quite like the local newspaper. The highs and the lows, the frustrations and the delights (with the sports desk normally being blamed for the former by readers, but rarely thanked for the latter). So it’s no surprise that when the not-quite-life-and-death matters of promotion and relegation are dealt with, the [...]

[Adrian Monck] Press freedom is just political advertising

Wed, 30 May 2012 19:17:05 GMT

From the Leveson inquiry this week: (Tony) Blair complains about the crossover of comment and news in newspapers. He says that this “stops being journalism. It’s then an instrument of propaganda or political power” What exemptions should there be for … Continue reading →

[Shane Richmond] Polish PM blasts Barack Obama’s death camp statement for its ‘ignorance, lack of knowledge, bad intentions’

Wed, 30 May 2012 18:41:23 GMT

America’s liberal ‘mainstream’ media has largely ignored the diplomatic firestorm which has resulted from Barack Obama’s reference to a “Polish death camp” at a White House awards ceremony yesterday. But to say that this has been a public relations disaster for the Obama administration would be an understatement. The Polish government, one of Washington’s most important [...]

[The Media Blog] Don't miss Alan Sugar's Apprentice commentary

Wed, 30 May 2012 18:36:43 GMT

With tired tasks and a rather underwhelming intake of hapless hopefuls the current series of The Apprentice is starting to drag a little. However, I found last week that a way to make it a little more interesting is to...

[Shane Richmond] Apparently, I don’t understand demand management

Wed, 30 May 2012 18:01:09 GMT

This is the last blog I ever do on Krugman – honest, because whenever I do them, I get my head torn off by his followers, and just recently, by the great man himself. It’s hard to criticise a perceived demi-god, and in any case, these arguments about deficit spending go round and round in [...]

[Shane Richmond] Facebook IPO: Morgan Stanley should be praised for acting ethically

Wed, 30 May 2012 17:15:38 GMT

We all know that the world’s in a mess and Armaggeddon is nigh simply because the investment banks were too greedy, too interested gaining their own pots of filthy lucre, to take care of their customers’ interests. Then along comes an investment bank that does in fact act contrary to its own interests, specifically and [...]

[Shane Richmond] Are women, on average, as funny as men? Who cares?

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:49:40 GMT

I read an interesting piece earlier by Lindy West, formerly of this parish and one of the funniest writers around. She came to my attention a couple of years ago with a splendid evisceration of the second Sex and the City film, which she memorably described as a “146-minute home video of gay men playing [...]

[Shane Richmond] We should teach children properly, instead of giving them consolation prizes for their failure

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:20:11 GMT

Alan Milburn is a genuinely nice guy, but he left the planet I live on when he suggested that careers in medicine should be opened up to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. He scored a first by managing to bang on about the wonderful social mobility of the 1950s and 1960s without mentioning once that the [...]

[Shane Richmond] Doctors striking to protect £50,000 a year pensions need a reality check

Wed, 30 May 2012 14:50:16 GMT

Pensions experts prescribed a reality check for doctors threatening strike action, pointing out that medical professionals make up three quarters of public sector workers who enjoy index-linked pensions of more than £50,000 a year. Actuaries, the mathematicians who advise pension funds, calculate that the average doctor retires on an index-linked risk-free final salary pension of [...]

[Shane Richmond] Choosing who lives and who dies: the methodical assassinations of Barack Obama’s ‘kill list’

Wed, 30 May 2012 14:24:45 GMT

There is something deeply unsettling about the disclosure in The New York Times that America has developed a clinical, dispassionate procedure for selecting the targets of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Every week or so, about 100 national security officials gather by video conference to pore over the photographs and biographies of al-Qaeda [...]

[Shane Richmond] Europe’s post-Nazi stress disorder has brought it to ruin

Wed, 30 May 2012 14:00:13 GMT

The European crisis threatens to re-awaken the old monster of nationalism, military historian Antony Beevor has warned. In an interview with the Telegraph, the author of Stalingrad and Berlin: the Downfall said that: The great European dream was to diminish militant nationalism. We would all be happy Europeans together. But we are going to see [...]

[Shane Richmond] The euro-crash is coming. Will Ireland vote to be part of it?

Wed, 30 May 2012 13:15:12 GMT

It’s hard to see what else the eurozone leaders have to do to encourage Ireland to vote ‘No’ to the FU Treaty. Christine Lagarde and José Manuel Barroso lecture people about austerity while paying almost no tax on their own salaries. Billions of euros are confiscated from ordinary taxpayers to rescue wealthy fools from their poor [...]

[Shane Richmond] Unicef’s report on child poverty just doesn’t make sense

Wed, 30 May 2012 12:58:51 GMT

How much lower can that wicked George Osborne sink? Not content with slashing public services to the bone, he’s now snatching the very bread out of the mouths of Britain’s children, condemning them to a life of horrifying, Dickensian destitution. That, at least, is the impression you’d get from reading Unicef’s latest report on child [...]

[Jon Slattery] NUJ says no staff consulted over seven-day Mirror

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Slattery) — Wed, 30 May 2012 12:37:00 GMT

The NUJ says journalists were not consulted by Trinity Mirror over the plan to create a seven day Mirror and axe Daily Mirror editor Richard Wallace and Sunday Mirror editor Tina Weaver (top).

The union blames outgoing Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey for the decision.

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said:“The shock announcement today is a decision made once again without any consultation or agreement with staff. The move to a seven day operation and the brutal axing of the editors is an example of a company in crisis.

“It says a lot about the board of Trinity Mirror that they have allowed chief executive Sly Bailey, finally on her way out after presiding over stupendous decline, to push such drastic measures through. The statement from the company tries to dress up this last hurrah as a leap into a brave new world of multimedia publishing – the reality is that these cuts and the weakening of the titles’ identities will be a further blow to resources and quality journalism from a lame duck chief executive whose monumental lack of vision has seen the company’s fortunes plummet.

“Half of all jobs across the entire group have already been axed, the company's strength has ebbed away yet executives have consistently attacked its assets - journalists and the quality journalism they produce. Although the NUJ does not have formal recognition rights yet at Trinity Mirror’s national titles, the union will be meeting with its many members across the titles to discuss their response as a chapel.”

[Shane Richmond] All hail Michael Gove, defender of the Tory faith (at least compared to David Cameron)

Wed, 30 May 2012 12:14:17 GMT

Michael Gove for Conservative Party leader? Can you imagine it? The collective mind of Twitter can – journalists and politicos of all persuasions jumped to the idea after his appearance before Leveson yesterday (Guido Fawkes collected the best). His performance was marvellous. He made an impassioned plea for liberty and common sense with plenty of lines [...]

[The Media Blog] The most offensive advert ever...?

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:48:05 GMT

To mark its 50th anniversary, The Advertising Standards Authority has released a list of the most complained about adverts of all time. The list speaks volumes about gentle British sensibilities - not least because the most offensive advert of all...

[Paul Bradshaw] Now available by distance learning: my MA in Online Journalism

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:41:32 GMT

The MA in Online Journalism which I established at Birmingham City University in 2009 is now available via distance learning. The MA in Online Journalism by distance learning is primarily aimed at people who are already working in a content- or technology-related role. Students can use their current work as part of their studies, or [...]

[WannabeHacks] n0tice’s new toolkit takes open journalism to the next level

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:21:42 GMT

n0tice, the lean startup style company working within the Guardian Media Group, has launched their “open journalism toolkit”. n0tice describe the toolkit as a ”free off-the-shelf solution to some of the digital newsroom’s current challenges”. For some background on what n0tice

[Shane Richmond] Paul Krugman hates austerity, unless it’s the Irish variety

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:10:58 GMT

The Today programme’s Evan Davis was suitably deferential to the American economist Paul Krugman this morning, reminding us a couple of times that he is a Nobel laureate and subjecting him to the gentlest of interrogations. Krugman’s selling point is that he is the most fluent and strident of anti-austerity economists, using his New York [...]

[Shane Richmond] Barack Obama’s war on terror is nastier and less ethical than George W Bush’s

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:10:10 GMT

When historians come to describe Obama’s domestic agenda, there won’t be much to write except “a mess.” Fiscal policy has been dictated by events, spending has plunged out of control and his healthcare reforms could well be rejected by the Supreme Court. But on foreign policy, a different picture emerges. The President is a tough [...]

[Shane Richmond] Barack Obama’s ‘Polish death camps’ slip was crass, but the special-interest-driven calls for an apology are worse

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:09:47 GMT

My colleague Nile Gardiner brings it to my attention that Barack Obama made a bit of an error yesterday by referring to a “Polish death camp” when, of course, he meant a Nazi death camp in Poland. The Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski – an Oxford-educated Bullingdon Club member – tweeted that the “White House will [...]

[Shane Richmond] Krugman – please make me chaste, but not now, not ever

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:03:48 GMT

“Give me a stronger economy, and I’ll turn into a fiscal hawk”, said Paul Krugman on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, adding for good measure the old chestnut of “please make me chaste, but not yet”. Except that we all know that this is not what would happen in practice if Professor Krugman [...]

[Shane Richmond] I can’t help it, I think Ken Clarke is great

Wed, 30 May 2012 10:31:20 GMT

On the front of today’s Comment & Features section in the Daily Telegraph there is a large picture of Ken Clarke. The Justice Secretary can be seen “watching” the Test Match at Trent Bridge. He is enjoying a post-prandial snooze; his head is back; he is yawning; a cream linen jacket struggles to cover his [...]

[Shane Richmond] Europe’s money contracts again

Wed, 30 May 2012 10:27:17 GMT

Very quickly, today’s ECB data shows that Euroland’s money supply is contracting again. M3 fell by €51bn in April. M1 fell by €55bn. Private credit fell €55bn. I don’t yet have the country breakdown. My guess is that the Club Med implosion is grim. The chart is based on the annual rate. It has not [...]