links for 2008-07-25
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Almost slow, but not quite: some of these topics are too big and not relevant to today. Paul McCartney? Brad Pitt?
Dadblog is currently sleeping. See my wide-awake blog here
Best slow news page so far
The Guardian’s Darwin page (no, not that Darwin).
More please (and what about some web links on that page, while we’re at it).
links for 2008-07-22
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“Newspapers have more important things to do than worry about comments—like, say, report the stories that blogs so desperately need in their 24-7 quest for content!” Finally, someone says it….
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Bad Day is the most-played song of the last five years. And it drives me absolutely chuffing nuts. Are these two facts related?
links for 2008-07-18
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Officials are examining how they can adapt the fiscal rules set in place by Gordon Brown over a decade ago, allowing them to pay off existing debts and borrow more, all at one low, low rate of interest.
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“Journalists are very collaborative and we had about eight people covering Wimbledon [the tennis tournament] and sharing information was quite cumbersome and mostly done over a mobile. The CEO’s challenge to IT was to stop being a beat-up group.”
links for 2008-07-17
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What’s amusing is that a lot of this commentary comes from people who, as best I can tell, have never met a payroll, who know absolutely nothing about the advertising business and how it works
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Here comes Carcetti: “Directly elected mayors are to be given democratic control over their local police as part of a shakeup to be detailed today by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith.”
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“Video content is excluded entirely from the API, along with a number of programs that include The Diane Rehm Show, Radio Labs, Fresh Air and Car Talk. Some of these exclusions are likely due to licensing issues, but the lack of video is frustrating.”
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Nice consumer-level study of ebook options by Vic Keegan.
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What they need is some user-interaction: a slider which allows users to make business leaders grumpy or sad, maybe indexed to the stock market….
links for 2008-07-16
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Derek Draper! If I hadn’t quit already, I’d be quitting now.
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“Namely, that UK newspapers in particular, like the Guardian, are showing up a lot more often on Digg’s homepage, displacing more familiar tech sites such as Ars Technica, Engadet, and Gizmodo.”
links for 2008-07-11
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“His version of the state sets rules, ensures a level playing field and disburses funds, but gives schools more freedom and the users of health services more control of their budgets.” Yes, I’m thinking about it….
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“A New Yorker visiting London is less likely to be murdered than he would be at home. But he is more likely to be beaten up.”
Why newspapers need their own tech
Jeff has a marvellous post about why newspapers should get out of technology and concentrate on what they’re really good at. It is, as I say, a marvellous post. And one with which I completely disagree.
My disagreement starts with Jeff’s question:
So why not hand over those segments of the business to Google and concentrate on what a newspaper should do: journalism?
My answer would be: well, it depends on how you define journalism. If you define it as the business of noticing events and describing them, then sure, give it all to Google. But for me, journalism is the practice of telling stories and, as such, technology is essential.
For example, start with the thing Google is obviously best at: search. My argument is that a newspaper is always capable of providing a better search experience of its own archive than Google is. It knows when it published things. It knows who its writers are. It knows (but doesn’t always demonstrate that it knows) what its narratives are. It can arrange its search results accordingly. Search can be an extension of telling a story. Google finds pages. It doesn’t knit those pages together into narratives.
Note, of course, that I’m not saying newspapers actually do this. Some do, some don’t. The point is that they could, and they couldn’t if they ceded tech to Google.
Second example: workflow. The best newspaper content management systems (and I can think of only one at the moment - can you guess which?) are built on top of the workflow of journalists, which in itself is an expression of narratives which the newspaper wishes to follow. Want to republish today’s newspaper online? Then you need Content Management System A. Want to then develop those stories online during the day? Then you need Plugin B. Want to start putting out breaking news fragments alongside your canonical newspaper journalism? Then add in Blogging Platform Plugin D. Ooh, and some video? Then add Video Player Plugin E.
Etc. etc. etc. The CMS grows out of what the editorial team wants to do. Over time, it develops organically into an extension of that editorial team. Without that organic development, the editorial team becomes a news story production line, chucking out story after story onto a shared platform. No narrative.
Of course, I realise I’m describing an ideal situation here. And Jeff’s absolutely right to point out the idiocies that have been perpetrated in the name of this ideal. But organisations have been making this stuff up as they went along and only now are they becoming able to equate technical sophistication with journalistic endeavour.
Don’t throw the narrative baby out with the technology bath water, is all I’m saying.
links for 2008-07-10
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Facebook now accounts for around 20% of JustGiving’s own revenue
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“If your track is played on our personalised premium radio service, you will accrue the greater of either 10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the personalised radio service, or US $0.0005 for each complete transmission”