What-gate? Can the media just make up their minds on what to call the Brand/Ross/Sachs fiasco?

Little did the architects behind the office/hotel complex at the heart of the Nixon affair (doesn’t sound right does it?) know what an impact the building’s name would have on the British media.

It’s a legacy which has given British newspaper journalists an easy way to coin a name for the latest ’scandal’ (scandal defined in its broadest sense: we have Flakegate, after all).

But when it comes to last week’s BBC outrage no-one seems to know which gate to stick with:

Media Guardian alone refers to Sachsgate, Granddaughtergate and Manuelgate.

We’ve seen Rossgate from the Telegraph, Brandgate from the Independent. For readers’ sake, since the coverage really doesn’t seem to be letting up, let’s have an agreed gate.

And some consistency please: should the named gate namesake be the perpetrators, or the victims of the ’scandal’? That particular detail often bothers me: we’ve had Queengate, but also Cherie and Camillagate (Nipplegate of Justin Timberlake fame is a particular favourite).

Reuters and most of the papers/blogs are going with Manuelgate but my vote’s with ‘whatnewanglecanwepossiblytakenowgate’ (she says, fully aware of the irony as she pens her own tenuous angle for this blog post).

Mainly because Rossgate could lead to confusion for the poor pupils at this school in Hemel Hempstead.

Any gates on this particular story I’ve missed? For those that care and are thinking of writing their Masters thesis on the subject, there’s actually a Wikipedia page dedicated to ’scandal-gates’ (which actually already lists Manuelgate, fyi).

Tags: andrew sachs, BBC, brandgate, camillagate, cheriegate, flakegate, georgina baillie, granddaughtergate, guardian, Independent, jonathan ross, manuelgate, nixon, queengate, reuters, rossgate, russell brand, sachsgate, telegraph, watergate

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Telegraph Blogs: News on the web needs to be free

Shane Richmond is not convinced by the FT.com's subscription model: "it will become harder and harder for the FT to maintain its audience as the internet generation climbs the corporate ladder," he writes. "The current audience believe they are getting content that they can’t get anywhere else - and that certainly isn’t available free - but the audience of the future may already have found other, more accessible publishers to meet their needs." Full story...

Tags: ft, FT.com, internet generation, Shane Richmond, subscriptions, telegraph

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NMK: User-generated content ‘is not cheap’, says Guardian.co.uk development head

Publishers using user-generated content (UGC) are not simply going for the cheap option, Neil McIntosh, head of editorial development at Guardian.co.uk, told the audience at last night’s New Media Knowledge (NMK) ‘What happens to newspapers?’ event.

McIntosh was responding to suggestions made by the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) Tim Gopsill that publishers were using more UGC to reduce costs.

“UGC is not cheap. It’s many things, but it’s not cheap. It’s extremely expensive to nurture it and to make it something worthwhile. My heart sinks when I hear the union saying that journalists are going to be replaced with UGC,” said McIntosh.

Costs of publishing UGC, such as photos and comments, rapidly and training staff to moderate and contribute to discussions online are often overlooked in the debate over whether publishers should be using it, he added.

Speaking specifically about the Guardian’s new belief channel on its Comment is Free (CiF) platform, McIntosh said that without proper moderation and nurturing, the paper ‘might as well be lighting the blue touch paper and running’.

When interacting with UGC, in particular comments, blog posts and CiF submissions, it is about ‘encouraging journalists to write the kind of things that kickstart a debate in the right direction’, he said.

Tags: Guardian.co.uk, Moderation, Neil McIntosh, NMK, telegraph, Tim Gopsill, ugc, user-generated content

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