iTunes also lists the top free iPhone news apps but apparently uses an algorithm based on the last four days of sales/downloads. So, bearing in mind this is more of a snapshot (which may also be a bit skewed because we are currently in holiday season), the top five free UK news apps are currently:
Another classic animation from Next Media Animation .tv, this one illustrating the Daily Telegraph’s sting operation on Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable, who is currently the secretary of state for business innovation and skills in the UK’s Liberal Democrats/Conservatives coalition government.
Two undercover reporters from the Telegraph, posing as constituents, managed to record Cable stating in reference to Rupert Murdoch‘s attempted takeover of BSkyB: “I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win.”
OK, we know it’s quality not quantity that counts, but it’s still fascinating (to us at least) to learn which stories have attracted the most traffic over the course of a year.
Unsurprisingly, Wikileaks is prominent as was the televised leaders debate during the general election. And some old faithfuls continue to pull in traffic from jobseekers and ‘wannabe’ freelancers (this year that was probably mostly unemployed journalism graduates and recently ‘redundant’ journalists).
But stories about paywalls failed to even come close…
There have been several reports this week that a long-standing, group-wide pay freeze at Newsquest has shown signs of thawing. Journalism.co.uk has reported extensively on the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) campaign against the pay freeze and the series of strikes that have taken place at Newsquest titles in the past few months.
So has the pay freeze been lifted? Unfortunately, it’s not as straightforward as that. Here’s what we know:
An NUJ update and official has confirmed that a 2 per cent pay increase has been offered at some Newsquest centres;
The centres that have been confirmed so far are Bradford, York and Darlington;
The NUJ has not yet returned our calls to confirm what centres, if any, in the south or Scotland have been made an offer;
Journalism.co.uk has learned that in the current offers, no move to backdating pay has been included;
The date from which a pay increase would take place – if the offers are accepted – depends on each centre’s “pay anniversary”, a date agreed between NUJ chapels and management when new pay or holiday settlements would be introduced.
A step in the right direction – but there’s more to come on this story…
There are hundreds of people around the UK who are a dab hand at covering the world of media on their blogs and on twitter, and so it has been a difficult task drawing up lists of our personal favourites. But we have done some list-whittling and each present our five favourite bloggers and five favourite tweeters.
Please add your own in the comments below, or via Twitter to @journalismnews.
Our top five journalism blogs and tweeters of 2010
As chosen by John Thompson, founder, Journalism.co.uk:
@sashers – for her formidable live tweeting @aleximostrous – for his Twitter WikiLeaks coverage @substuff – for hilarious insights into the world of consumer magazine subbing @guardianstyle – for running an on-demand style guide on Twitter @wannabehacks – just missed the blog category but deserve a mention for hard graft and good content
Making light of others’ mistakes is fraught with danger, and will often come back to haunt you when you make your own.
But that doesn’t stop us or anybody else, it seems. Schadenfreude is all the rage. So, here are just a few of our favourite own goals and gaffes from 2010, in no particular order. We would include some of our own but we don’t make any, obviously… Please feel free to add any you remember in comments or on Twitter to @journalismnews.
One of those errors in which the sub concentrates so hard on not making one particular mistake that they make exactly that mistake. Either that, or it’s Friday afternoon and they think a good laugh is worth the grief sure to follow.
Not really a scandal this, I suppose, or an outright error, but we think it qualifies as gaffe to put Roger Boyes on your Catholic Church-boys choir-sex abuse story. Dear the Times, he may be your Vienna correspondent, but perhaps he shouldn’t be.
Following weeks of protest over Newsquest laying off local subs at the Brighton Argus and centralising news subbing 60 miles away in Southampton, the out-of-towners made a slight mistake on their first day.
Rumour has it that the following day – and I kid you not – the paper almost went to print calling itself “the Argos”. Although not on the masthead, we understand. Unfortunately for this list, it got caught just in time. Allegedly.
Advert placement has been a rich source of gaffery in the past, but back in March the Sun used all the technological wizardry available to it to launch this advertising cock-up into a league of its own
Speaking of rich sources of gaffery, to the notorious content management system from Atex. This tremendous CMS, dear to the hearts of regional journalists up and down the country, has caused so many headline and image mishaps that we would be remiss not to include a sample. Don’t miss an insightful standfirst and pull quote either.
Much fun was had back in August when someone at the Indy was caught red-handed pilfering from Wikipedia. Many, many journalists must have done it, but this unlucky one happened to plagiarise some, well, total wanky balls.
Hannah Waldram has kindly pointed out that in our haste we missed a rather recent, rather spectacular double gaffe from Jim Naughtie and Andrew Marr. Although we undoubtedly missed many on our short list, we feel that Messrs Naughtie and Marr definitely deserve a place.
Here is Naughtie introducing the culture secretary with flawless anunication….
…and Andrew Marr trying to beat him at his own game:
Merry Christmas subs, editors and reporters everywhere, keep up the good work!
