Do your own bloody work!

June 23, 2010 by shanecroucher 1 Comment

I got an email from one of those double-barrelled surname PR types earlier. Obviously there was the usual uninteresting gumpf about the nobody musicians they are promoting, but the last part of the email really got me:

I was hoping that you might be able to pass this around to relevant societies/your student radio stations for me?

I can also offer you interviews with the guys if you are interested.

The last thing is that they have started taking bookings for a Uni tour later this year through Mission Control but if you could pass my details on to your Ents Managers we can organise dates with them more easily.

Yeah, tell you what – I’ll take time out of my day, to research the contact details for all of the societies at the University of Lincoln, to pass on your press release. What’s more, I’ll forward it to the radio station, another media outlet, yeah? Then I’ll get in contact with the Entertainments Manager to let them know about this exciting shit that you’re proposing, yeah?

Shall I hold your calls too, sir?

*Move to trash*.

Filed under Random Tagged with , ,

Why the merging of print and online?

June 21, 2010 by shanecroucher Leave a Comment

Patrick Smith has written over at journalism.co.uk about how the controversial new content management system, Atex’s Prestige/P-Series, being used at Johnston Press is hindering digital progression in newsrooms. Smith writes:

“Cheap, dynamic blogging solutions like WordPress and Typepad provide all newsrooms need to create a respectable news site. Publishing executives seem to find it hard to believe that something free to use can be any good, but just look at what’s coming in the in-beta WordPress 3.0.”

One commenter under the story, Scoop, made a point about WordPress:

WordPress is great – but show me how it allows you to produce a newspaper. Show me how it manages advertising placements. Show me how it integrates with newspaper production systems without laborious copy and pasting. Show me how it scales up to deliver millions of pages. Show me how it manages dozens of sites under a joint yet devolved framework.

Isn’t online and print writing meant to be entirely different? This “laborious copy and pasting” shouldn’t happen in the first place, surely, as journalists should be writing one article for their print edition and then totally modifying it to be fit for the web: short sentences, SEO, etc.

Why does the system that allows a newsroom to produce a physical newspaper have to be shackled to the website? Why not run the two entirely separately? Why not employ a couple of people to control the website of each title, and allow them to run and design the websites in-house and individually for each title’s needs, instead of having one utterly shit and immovable web template for all?

Then your titles will be able to play with video, audio, slideshows, and all the other goodies readers should be offered.

Filed under Journalism Tagged with , , , ,

Can Clegg lose?

May 7, 2010 by shanecroucher Leave a Comment

Clegg’s said that the Tories deserve to try and form a government because they won the most seats, though they didn’t hit the majority-threshold of 326. However, it’s constitutional that the sitting PM has the first-right to form a government in the event of a hung Parliament. The Lib Dems will probably initially reject any Labour offer for a coalition.

Then, as we see the Tories unable to offer electoral reform – which is an absolute must for the Liberal Democrats – they’ll be unable to form a government, as it’s also on the agenda for some of the minor parties in parliament.

The door will open again for Labour, who will put forward electoral reform as a part of a deal for a Lab/Lib coalition.

I think Clegg knows that the Tories won’t be able to form a government, so he might as well ‘stick to his principles’ because he knows, or thinks, he won’t lose. It’s just delaying the inevitable while scoring some political points for his reputation.

Then, Labour will have to move to oust Brown and put David Miliband at the top – Clegg won’t do a deal with Labour while Brown is PM.

UPDATE — How wrong I was!

Filed under Politics

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