In a posthumous editorial, murdered Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge foretells his own death and hints at how it will happen.
“When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me,” he wrote in the column, which was published just days after he was shot dead in the country’s capital, Colombo.
From the looks of Comment is Free feedback, the jury’s still out on this one. Is George Monbiot an interviewing force to be reckoned with? “Monbiot grills his subjects, making Paxman look like a pussycat,” Guardian.co.uk says of the environmentalist’s video interview series.
In his latest video offering (can’t be embedded here, you have to visit site) he talks to Shaun Spiers, head of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and asks Spiers why the campaign opposes windfarms but not opencast coal mines.
Below the video there’s lots of CiF praise balanced with a bit of criticism: is Monbiot really scarier than Paxman?
From the Observer Media Diary: evidence of a print newspaper model that seems to be, wait for it, reducing its losses.
“City AM, London’s free financial paper, continues to confound the sceptics.
“It filed accounts for 2007 earlier this month, which revealed accumulated losses of just over £7m – but that reflects start-up costs, and sources close to the title say that, after several years of losing well over £2m, it will post a loss of just few hundred thousand pounds this year.
“Revenues are up 22 per cent and the title is on course to make money in 2009, at a time when more established titles are likely to plunge into the red.”
“I can’t find any celebrities, or any breaking news, just endless prattle from people with too much time and too little imagination. After two hours, I log out, and I won’t be back.” The Evening Standard’s Nick Curtis describing his ‘trial’ of Twitter.
@paulcarr does a brilliant job over at Guardian.co.uk, complete with drunken Laguna Beach and toga-wearing anecdotes (not sure how he worked those in), so Journalism.co.uk won’t re-tell the whole story here.
In short: @nickcurtis, film critic at the Evening Standard tried out Twitter for all of two hours. Yes, two hours, before dismissing the whole entire thing. Nick, please listen to Paul. You need to try it out for a bit longer than that to see how it all works and bear with it. For a start, you might need to actually follow some people (at time of writing – followers: 0).
Journalism.co.uk and aficionado of Twitter (@journalismnews / @journalism_live / @lauraoliver / @jtownend) wonders if Curtis would review a film by just watching an equivalent fraction (about 1/8 of its trailer at most).
@Chrisgreen sums it up nicely: @nickcurtis – ‘Just read your article on Twitter. Your lack of research & sloppy conclusions are an embarrassment to journalism & the Standard’.
But then, it looks like Curtis won’t be logging back in to read the reactions.
Andrew Brown critiques the site’s new look, labelling it the ‘worst online redesign I have ever seen’.
Former head of mobile strategy for News International (NI), Andrew Bagguley has been hired as a consultant for Guardian News&Media (GNM), as the title begins its move into the mobile market.
Bagguley left NI in August following a reorganisation of the publisher’s digital arm. He helped The Sun and News of the World launch mobile websites and implement QR codes for mobile advertising.
After two years at NI Bagguley has just started at GNM, a spokeswoman for the group confirmed to Journalism.co.uk.
“We want to benefit from his experience launching mobile for News International so he’ll be working closely with our in house teams to formulate our plans,” she said.
GNM currently offers news alerts via text message and a version of Guardian.co.uk for PDA, SmartPhone and BlackBerry devices.
Removing the original online posting of the leaked list of members of the British National Party (BNP) has failed to contain the spread of the information online.
The list and reactions to it are being avidly Twittered, as a search for BNP on Twitter search engine Summize shows, while the document has made its way onto Wikileaks.
According to the party’s website, the blog that posted the ‘outdated’ list was removed from Blogger ‘after urgent legal action was instituted by the BNP leadership’.
In a Guardian.co.uk article, BNP leader Nick Griffin has admitted that the party is relying on the Human Rights Act, which it opposes, to help protect its members’ privacy.
Meanwhile reporting on the incident has raised questions of linking, as this blog post from TimesOnline suggests:
“The Times decided not to link to the list, even though we often do link to material without taking that as some kind of endorsement.
“There were various reasons for the decision, most of them expressed in other comments on our various online reports. Firstly, BNP members have as much right to privacy as anyone else. Secondly, last time we checked it was still a free country: there is no law against membership of the BNP.
“The list is out there now, even if a Google search no longer throws it up. The anti-fascist campaigners and phone-prankers are having a field day. We don’t need to help them.”
Blogger Craig McGill adds the following observation on the list’s travels online:
“I see the list has appeared on file sharing outlets? Will social crusaders claim this is a good use for P2P which is normally associated with piracy?”
Similarly a Google Maps mashup has also been created, though, as TechCrunchUK warns, it’s dangerously inaccurate and has the potential to aid vigilantes – while I write the map was taken down because of inaccuracies.
McGill also suggests that this story was broken first by mainstream media, despite being an online story – is this the case? If so, for an online leak, this could be a good sign of ‘traditional’ outlets upping their game when it comes to online news tracking.
Blogger Matt Waldman suggests the story of the leaked list was broken by the Lancaster Unity blog, while TheRegister.co.uk posted a report on the leak at 2:31pm (GMT) on Tuesday – also citing the Lancaster Unity post. MSM not quite first past the post then.
Waldman goes on to discuss the potential legal implications of linking to it:
“Links to material that is alleged to be defamatory (e.g. reports about Nadhmi Auchi preserved on Wikileaks) is part of the basis for the objections that the law firm Carter-Ruck have put to the New Statesman that have caused them to take down articles about Nadhmi Auchi by Martin Bright. No determination has yet been made whether that will stick under English Libel Law, but if the New Statesman and their legal advisers are taking it seriously I wouldn’t go the other way at this point. You will be relying on not being sued, which is your call.”
I haven’t linked to it in this post (though it’s easy enough to find with or without the directions given) for the reasons cited by both Wardman and the Times’ blog post.
The UK’s national newspaper websites aren’t linking either, though Mail Online posts both a screengrab of the list and pictures of alleged members and individual articles are being posted about ‘members’, their identies and any action taken by employers.
Debate on the blogs also focuses on how the list can be used – both journalistically and otherwise. The list was posted despite an injunction granted by the High Court in earlier this year banning its publication, so how will journalists (and the police and employers) act on it when it has been obtained in this way?
The New York Times has now decided to update on the Brand/Ross fiasco, just as the British press had moved onto other things – such as ‘is Obama really black’ (see today’s Comment is Free at Guardian.co.uk).
David Cox offended Guardian.co.uk users with his views on Hunger, Steve McQueen’s film on Bobby Sands. Where to draw the line on free speech?
To complement its liveblogged coverage of election day, which is still going at time of writing, Guardian.co.uk has changed its homepage design to the below:
This is a template that could be used for other major news events. As BBC News online editor Steve Herrmann told Journalism.co.uk earlier this week the election has been a great opportunity for news sites to experiment with coverage and layout, developing features for future use.