journalism – Page 4 – Slugger O'Toole

#Leveson: A mixed response to the British Press’s mass indulgence in criminal activity…

Mick Fealty on December 1, 2012, 10:15 am

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Worth waiting for Charlie Beckett to shoot down the idea that reforms in line with the current Irish system would suffice… – Guido has a scathing an op ed in the Sun today (sister paper of the now dead NOTW), noting the paucity of work in the Leveson Report on New Media. And pride of place on his blog this morning is this short paeon to his ‘triumph’: It seems Mr. Staines color was enough to persuade Lord Justice Brian …

Blessed are the newsbreakers; but which ones can you trust in the age of Twitter?

Mick Fealty on November 12, 2012, 3:13 pm

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There’s a number of great pieces online about where new authority is emerging to challenge the older models, particularly in the wake of the US election and superstorm Sandy. Forbes had this to say in response to a mainstream anchor thanking people for ‘helping out’: News flash for my local news anchors: the “amateurs” aren’t “helping out” the “professionals.” They are mostly ignoring them. They are mostly sending their pictures to their friends, not to you. And we’ve seen the …

Irish Times launches its new format and remains a broadsheet…

Mick Fealty on November 5, 2012, 10:52 am

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Great to see the Irish Times finally make a move it has been contemplating for some time. Briefly, it’s changed the format of the print version of the paper from classic broadsheet to a compact version. So now it is almost exactly the same size as London’s Daily Telegraph: The new size resolves a lot of problems that the staff at the Irish Times have been mulling for years. I suspect the tabloid was never seriously considered, particular after The …

America’s standoff between the shills and the gamblers…

Mick Fealty on November 2, 2012, 1:14 pm

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I’m afraid there will be no #DigitalLunch today due illness (mine) in the kitchen… So I’ve a couple short posts to share that I’ve collected over the last few days. One of the things that’s been exercising comment in America is the dominance of number cruncher in chief Nate Silver, who’s dominance of the prediction market this time out has been frustrating some of the old schools hacks and shills. In the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf points out that this came …

Donald Trump movie and the ill-defined concept of the ‘public interest’…

Mick Fealty on October 24, 2012, 3:21 pm

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If you have watched You’ve Been Trumped yet, you should. There are many strong points to this documentary on not just how Donald Trump threw his weight around with local residents whose homes bordered his development in Aberdeenshire. But of most interest to me is the degree to which the Scottish media and Scottish civil society meekly abandoned any public interest duty and at the very least acquiesced in the rich American’s appalling treatment of his ‘neighbours’. One of the …

Culture Night Belfast & the right to freedom of expression #CNB12

Patrick Corrigan on September 20, 2012, 12:38 pm

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Culture Night Belfast (and in a few other towns besides) is almost upon us. Tomorrow night is a chance for thousands of people to take to the streets, bars, cafes, offices and other nooks and crannies around the city to experience all sorts of arts and cultural experiences. While most events are concentrated on the Cathedral Quarter area of the city, this year’s Culture Night has extended its reach across the city. There are simply too many events to preview effectively …

Was 9/11 Television’s last great exclusive on a truly global event?

Mick Fealty on September 17, 2012, 11:01 am

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Last Friday’s #DigitalLunch was ostensibly about 9/11, and the effects it has had on society, or at least how society has changed in the meantime. Whether those changes were consequential or not is a moot point. Certainly in the realm of human communication technology and culture have never been more closely entwined. Blogs in 2001 did exist, but they had yet to find a broad cultural or political purpose. The traumatic events of that morning and afternoon in the US …

Roy Greenslade on hacking, Leveson, Murdoch, the local press and dissidents

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 10, 2012, 10:45 pm

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After a break of a decade, Roy Greenslade was back talking at Féile an Phobail on Thursday lunchtime, lecturing in the Falls Road library about the built up to and impact of the Leveson Inquiry. Mark Simpson introduced the journalist, ex-editor, commentator, academic and wearer of braces who has written for every national paper in London and who splits his time between Donegal and Brighton. He spoke for around 35 minutes before taking questions from an audience seeded with characters …

journalist ≠ campaigner?

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 6, 2012, 6:10 pm

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There was an interesting – though overly lengthy* – session on Human Rights and Journalism in St Mary’s College at lunchtime today as part of this year’s Féile an Phobail. A panel of Mandy McAuley (BBC Spotlight), Steven McCaffery (Deputy Editor PA The Detail) and Chris Moore (the Detail UTV) was chaired by Amnesty NI’s Patrick Corrigan. While human rights were on the edge of much of the discussion it was rarely the central point. As well as talk about …

New media networks are undermining traditional media formats yes, but…

Mick Fealty on August 6, 2012, 8:21 am

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Nice piece from Noel Whelan on media change in Ireland (and further afield)… What makes it interesting is the debate (originally between Conor Brady and John Bowman) about which medium was the main ‘significator’ of change in Ireland, newspapers or television. Whelan is in the Bowman (ie TV) camp: The Irish Times and other newspapers may have been creating ripples among their own readership segments, but television was the big change agent. There were also, as Brady points out, “clear-minded …

Tomorrow’s #Digital Lunch: Can digital journalism be commercially valuable?

Mick Fealty on August 2, 2012, 1:43 pm

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Yep, programme number three in an evolving series… Not only is it to be kindly hosted by UTV in Belfast, but our first special guest interviewee will be the TV station’s MD, Michael Wilson… We’ll kick off by looking at the vexed issue of how to extract commercial value out of digital journalism and segway into looking at other new commercial responses to a steadily digitising world… If you do want to join live panel you are welcome, but you …

The net deals with ‘acute’ issues better than the ‘chronic’

Mick Fealty on July 31, 2012, 2:25 pm

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Interesting piece from +Daniel Drezner in which he lauds the network of the web as a fact checker (not to mention dealing with idiots), but then argues that it also “permits an amplification of conspiracy theories that can attract pockets of people that otherwise would never bother to organize”. He continues: “The problem comes with slower-moving facts — those arguments or statements that are so “out there” that no significant online media would bother to check out until and unless it attracts …

Sinn Fein discrimination: Granting any institution immunity from public scrutiny can easily become a habit

Mick Fealty on June 28, 2012, 10:22 am

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It’s not entirely fair to say the whole of the southern press went to sleep on the Conor Murphy discrimination case, but Davy Adams has a point that in allowing itself to get spun into near hysteria over the “Tiocfaidh ár Lámh” PR campaign the Irish press took its eye run over yet another controversial story. And one they knew to be fit to print since most of their northern counterparts were, indeed, printing it. It’s not good enough, Adams …

Who’s in charge: PRs or journalists?

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on June 8, 2012, 4:06 pm

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The News Letter’s Ben Lowry was written an interesting opinion piece highlighting the jarring interface between reporters, PRs and in particular the government press machine. It sits well alongside Mick’s earlier post about the Hearts and Minds’ discussion around Stormont ‘nationalising’ its own images. [Ed – Is that new media talking about mainstream media talking about really old media?] Quality journalism costs money, and without readers who dip into their pockets to pull out some coins, most newspapers would disappear. …

Is #Stormont effectively ‘nationalising’ its own images?

Mick Fealty on June 8, 2012, 10:44 am

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When I was working as a sort of blogging pacemaker at the Daily Telegraph, it used to slightly irk me that the papers subs would always choose the photos. Invariably, if it was a piece that featured Gordon Brown the photo would alway capture some deeply unattractive aspect of his physog. But the point was, I suppose, that it was the paper that owned the means to refract the image of the government as opposed to the government itself. Likewise …

#EUref: Great editorials are built on great journalism: Ireland’s desperate choice…

Mick Fealty on May 31, 2012, 12:28 pm

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I don’t always see eye to eye with the Guardian newspaper. For one thing, their line between comment and news is often a little too blurred for my tastes [But you run a bloody blog! – Ed] Yes, but, well I’ve come to praise the Grauniad, not to bury it. Those of you who’ve been following Pete’s tight commentary on the Euro crisis, will have noted frequent references to their Eurozone crisis live blog. That blog has done almost exactly …

Licence fee freeze leads BBC NI slashes top journalist jobs…

Mick Fealty on May 10, 2012, 11:43 am

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Grim reading this morning in the Belfast Telegraph (h/t Nevin)… Hearts and Minds, as long expected, is to finally go. The production teams for three programmes will be to some extent amalgamated, and run on a rolling basis…. And some key assets are being got rid of, including Julia Paul who’s film pieces for Hearts and Minds have been some of the corporation’s consistently highest quality output: Politics reporters Yvette Shapiro and Julia Paul as well as environment correspondent Mike …

And the Orwell Prize shortlist is…

Mick Fealty on April 24, 2012, 11:38 pm

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Well, Long listed for the Orwell is as far as we got, but if you haven’t already read them here’s the shortlist with two of my own favourites for the blog prize, Rangers Tax Case (who’s exceptional work is now coming to fruition) and the intimiable Alex Massie, a Tory blogger that most Scots Nats respect if don’t ever quite agree with… Alex as a Trinity old boy is about the nearest Ireland has to a rep in the final shortlist …

Why the sixth (fifth, fourth, third and second) edition(s) of the Belfast Telegraph had to go…

Mick Fealty on April 22, 2012, 9:13 am

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I want to come back to the issue of newspapers and the problem of staffing good product in a highly contested digital age, particular in the wake of the recent discussion on Hearts and Minds. But in the meantime, I think it’s appropriate to quote one of Squinter’s best column’s of recent times, which described precisely the pain inflicted by the internet on the news paper industry… The Tele was an indispensable part of every punter’s toolkit in the 60s …

O’Reilly leaves Independent Newspapers; O’Brien consolidates as chief shareholder…

Mick Fealty on April 20, 2012, 12:15 pm

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Yesterday an Irish dynasty came to a fairly sudden end. Within hours of a mystery buyer taking 2 per cent in Independent Newspapers, Gavin O’Reilly bowed out as Chief Executive of Independent Newspapers. It’s all change at the newspaper group, with Vincent Crowley stepping up to take on the job of Chief Executive but not it’s not yet clear where (if anywhere) the balance of power on the board now rests. Interestingly on Twitter, Simon Kelner of the London Independent …