MSN News UK: Heat map of MPs’ expenses

MSN has created a heat map of MPs’ expenses claims between April 2007 and March 2008 – see screengrab below.

Full map at this link…

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Wordle and elections

Visualisations: Try using Wordle at election times – compare speeches from party leaders in visualisations to see who’s repeating each other and who’s offering something new. A good visual aid for your readers. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Times Online: Google shows support for local newspaper mergers

The search engine giant will today make the case that regional newspaper publishers should be allowed to merger, because of the impact of Google and other internet companies, in its submission to the Office of Fair Trading’s review of the existing newspaper merger structure.

Full article at this link…

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Newsquest titles run BNP ad

This screengrab tells the story. Or visit Newsquest’s Bromsgrove Advertiser page directly. The newspaper is carrying a homepage banner advertising the BNP. The advert clicks through to the BNP website. At time of writing the same ad can be found on Newsquest’s Dudley News and Stourbridge News sites.

(via Jon Slattery’s blog)

Last year Archant title, the Hampstead & Highgate Express, defended its decision to carry BNP advertising.

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Online Journalism Blog: ‘Wolfram Alpha for journalists’

Paul Bradshaw takes a look at new seach engine (or computational knowledge engine) Wolfram Alpha, with a journalist’s hat on.

Bradshaw finds, for example: “From a journalistic perspective, [some of its] features are a time-saver if you don’t fancy browsing through almanacs and biographies for the same facts. But that’s it. And it’s not clear where the information is coming from or how accurate it is (Karen Blakeman, whose review is worth reading, told me it gets some things wrong, ‘even chemical structures’) – that’s the advantage of Google or Wikipedia: you can evaluate the credibility of the source relatively intuitively; Wolfram, however, presents itself as the source, and where links are given in ‘Source Information’ these are often just to homepages.”

Full post at this link…

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A multimedia-sourced MPs’ expenses interview from Sky News

Sky News sourced live questions via its website for Saturday’s (May 16) television debate with the Guardian associate editor, Michael White, and the former independent MP for Tatton, Martin Bell.

Questions were posted on the Sky News website and the feature could be watched live via video streaming or on the news channel.

Speaking ahead of the event, Phil Wardman, head of Sky News Online, said: “It’s a great way of harnessing a huge response from web-users. Hosting a simultaneous live debate online and on TV encourages viewer interactivity and gives them a forum to have their questions discussed.”

Replay the Cover It Live chat at this link, and the video is embedded below:

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allmediascotland.com: Kachingle delays launch because of ‘overwhelming response’

Kachingle.com, a system which will collect ‘voluntary contributions in exchange for easily displayed social recognition’ and bills itself as ‘a way for readers to choose and equitably share their $5 monthly contribution with the web sites they appreciate the most’ is delaying its full launch, allmediascotland.com reports.

“Kachingle’s founder, Cynthia Typaldos, told allmediascotland.com: “The delay in our launch is because we needed to make sure our initial system could scale to hundreds of thousands of active users….which is what we now expect given that newspapers will be some of our initial launch sites.”"

Full post at this link…

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The Economist: Rows at Doha Centre for Media Freedom

From The Economist: ‘A freedom-promoting media centre is accused of going too far too fast’. The organisation’s head, founder and former secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Robert Ménard, is involved in rows with Qatari officials and critics.

“When the Qataris asked Robert Ménard to run what they heralded as the world’s first press freedom centre, in Doha, their capital, they were probably asking for trouble. An intrepid Frenchman who had previously run a Paris-based lobby, Reporters Without Borders, Mr Ménard is famous for courting controversy. Last year he disrupted a torch-lighting ceremony in Greece that was meant to be a dignified prelude to the Olympic games in China. Later he scaled Notre Dame Cathedral and unfurled a protest banner as the torch was carried through Paris. Now, only months after becoming head of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, he is entangled in a row that may well be more bitter than anything he has experienced.”

Full story at this link…

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Editor&Publisher: ‘Maureen Dowd admits wrongdoing, NYT will correct’

Speculations of plagiarism were zipping round Twitter yesterday, following this blog post hosted on myTPM Blog. Visit Huffington Post for an explanation from New York Times’ Maureen Dowd.

Editor&Publisher does a good job of summing it up, at this link. Extract below:

“(…) by mid [Sunday] afternoon she [Maureen Dowd] she was on the hot seat for using a paragraph almost word-for-word from one of the most prominent liberal bloggers, Jost [sic] Marshall of Talking Points Memo, without attribution. Charges of ‘plagiarism’ ensued.

“By early evening, Dowd had admitted wrongdoing, in an email to Huffington Post, and said she wanted to apologize to [Josh] Marshall. She also said that the Times would issue a correction tomorrow – and the copy was changed in her column to attribute the line of thought to Marshall.

“She seemed to be suggesting, however, that she had merely heard the line of argument from a friend, who did not attribute it to Marshall. This wouldn’t explain, however, why the rather lengthy sentence, a full paragraph, matched Marshall’s writing virtually word for word.”

Full story at this link…

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Jimmy Carr mocks VJ’s camera: ‘That’s from home!’

A great video from the East Anglian Daily Times at this link. Its video journalist’s equipment just wasn’t big enough for Jimmy Carr’s approval last week. Photographers tried to grab shots of the comedian outside the court hearing in Suffolk on May 13 that saw Jimmy Carr’s speeding trial adjourned.

Carr told the VJ: “It’s not a proper camera. You’re not a proper journalist: look at that! That’s from home.”

Transcript:

Jimmy Carr:

“Do you want to grab a shot and then leave it?”

Photographer, off-camera:

“Can I get you both together?”

Carr, walking off:

“No, you definitely can’t now!”

Lawyer, to camera:

“No, we can’t make any comment at all at the moment. The case has been adjourned so it would be inappropriate to make any comment, ok.”

(…)

Carr, walking past cameras:

“(…)Thanks for coming, I feel very important. Very nice of you.

“If you’ve got shots… ‘cos I’m going to drive away – I don’t want people taking shots when I’m driving. It’s very dangerous.

“It’s not a proper camera. You’re not a proper journalist: look at that! That’s from home.”

Muffled muttering off-camera, not clear who says it:

“… Mickey Mouse camera”

Full story at this link…

(via the Guardian’s Media Monkey)

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