journalism – Page 6 – Slugger O'Toole

Family ownership hindered News Corps’ ability to choose its own destiny, as a company

Mick Fealty on July 29, 2011, 8:37 am

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So James Murdoch is to be retained as head of BSkyB. If you missed Simon Jenkins on the matter on Newsnight last night, try Alison Smith in the FT this morning As for BSkyB, the case for refreshing the board is compelling and goes well beyond the position of James Murdoch, newly bolstered as chairman. It has been for a long time. The enduring thought that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp would buy the outstanding 60.9 per cent stake undoubtedly hindered …

Murdoch’s ‘total victory’ over the press unions may prove his company’s demise…

Mick Fealty on July 28, 2011, 1:04 pm

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Now, I am not sure I completely accept the story that Eamonn McCann tells about the demise of the NUJ (it possible, with hindsight at least, to suggest they picked the wrong fight with the wrong man) as an active force within the Murdoch empire, but the washing out of individual conscience of the journalist, certainly at the News of the World, seems to have important factor in the slow undermining of News International’s news product over time: The absence …

NOTW: “There are family members of dead servicemen on our board, and they will not accept News of the World’s money”

Mick Fealty on July 26, 2011, 11:19 am

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Fascinating piece in the New York Times on the last minutes of the News of the World. This is what ‘burning the brand’ means: When a chap from H.R. took the stage to tell us why our e-mail had stopped working, I walked out, too exhausted to listen anymore. I had one last assignment to complete. During my time with the paper, I had developed close ties with many charities, especially those dealing with the armed forces. Because of this, …

Michael White: “like repainting the Forth Bridge, it is a permanent process”

Pete Baker on July 7, 2011, 9:54 pm

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Notwithstanding the sudden demise of the NOTW, as Mick noted here, at the Guardian’s Politics blog Michael White follows up yesterday’s excellent post with another considered piece. From Michael White The point to bear in mind is that we can fix this, too, if we have the will and the staying power. Voters with their low boredom thresholds and salacious reading habits as well as public officials can act. Politics suffered a bad scandal two years ago and is in the process …

If we know where the NOTW ‘phreaking’ story began, where does it end?

Mick Fealty on July 5, 2011, 8:00 am

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It’s hard to find the right words to describe what Glenn Mulcaire appears to have done in the case of the murdered teenager, Milly Dowler. ‘Phreaking’, we’re told, rather than ‘hacking’ is the correct portmanteau term [*see Comrade Stalin’s comment below]. And that word is disturbingly resonant with a News of the World operative not just listening to Milly’s phone messages, but deleting some to make space for more, thereby falsely raising the family’s hopes that she might have still been …

The future of Irish media lies in the evolution of new business models…

Mick Fealty on June 29, 2011, 4:26 pm

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If you get time, it’s well worth watching Vincent Browne’s programme from Monday night. It’s a highly intelligent (not to mention passionate) discussion of Irish journalism’s most pressing problem; ie the disappearance of the business model underwriting much of the professional journalism in Ireland. It was fun (despite the dire implications of the topic), not least because gamekeeper turned poacher Susan Daly (aka @biddyearly on Twitter) took great delight in highlighting some of the blatant short comings of the mainstream …

Bundling content: “Will this do?” “Not really, but it will have to.”

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2011, 9:15 am

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There are many reasons to like the work of Alex Massie not least of these are his refreshing honesty. Here he is on the intractable necessity of filling a daily newspaper: …there are many pages to fill (one reason why newspapers might be better if they were slimmer) and you’ve got to fill them with something. Every day. If that means coming up with some nonsense or repackaging a press release as “news” then so be it. It’s true, and unfortunate, that …

Blogging, journalism and the beleaguered State: Is it time to end the neurosis?

Mick Fealty on March 16, 2011, 10:23 am

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I had intended writing another instalment on the ongoing crisis within journalism, but time’s short for original thought these days, especially when there are folk like Jay Rosen (et al) to do the thinking for you. Here’s the Guardian’s excellent précis of his presentation to SXSW. It’s refreshing to say the least: Mainstream journalists’ antagonism towards bloggers, he suggested, was sustained by the huge stress they find themselves under, which stems from five developments: 1. The collapsing economic model of …

Northern Ireland, where Government Press Officers outnumber journalists…

Mick Fealty on March 8, 2011, 4:44 pm

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If the first base in setting up a democracy is to get a critical mass of politicians to buy into standing for election and then (trying to help) run the country, then Northern Ireland passes that with flying colours. If the next step (and there is no reason these things have to be linear) is a free press to interrogate said public officials, then maybe we have a bit further to go. In any case, there was a nice spot …

Churnalism revisited

Aldous Duke on February 24, 2011, 11:10 pm

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I believe I’ll live to regret this, but to return to a topic touched on at the last picamp in Belfast. The Guardian reports on the new venture by the Media Standards Trust. Churnalism.com bills itself as a press release detector, allowing the user to paste an online sourced news story into a text box for cross reference against articles from the UK national press and the BBC. For those unfamiliar with the term, Wikipedia actually provides the best definition of churnalism: “A …

Hold the Front Page: “Three serious daily newspapers in Belfast”

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on February 23, 2011, 8:45 am

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News Letter Belfast Telegraph Irish News

To finish off what O’Neill started on Sunday night with Tele takes a hiding and the discussion around the circulation graphs, former editor Steve Dyson dissected the morning editions of the three local papers over on Hold the Front Page. With his eyes set on the Wednesday 24 January morning editions of the News Letter, the Irish News and Belfast Telegraph:am, he comments on the “calm” headlines that accompanied one of that week’s main stories, the evacuation of 100 homes …

Coulson: Or how Journos sometimes behave badly…

Mick Fealty on January 21, 2011, 12:46 pm

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Memorable line from Frazer Nelson of the Spectator who noted on the Daily Politics just now that the careers of all spin doctors end something like this… Guido reckons it is because Coulson’s junior at the News of the World as about to dob him in… Here’s how the story first broke the year before last… Interestingly Steve Richards thinks in the big round of things that this is one of the smaller stories of the day… I’d probably agree, …

The deaths of Anthony Howard and Brian Hanrahan are great losses to journalism

Brian Walker on December 20, 2010, 12:32 pm

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The deaths of two notable journalists, both “after a short illness, ” have come as a shock. I’d scolded the TV as I watched last week’s report of the last take off ever by Harrier jump jets as a result of the Defence cuts. “Surely that assignment is a natural for Brian?” Now I know the very sad answer. My deepest condolences to Brian Hanrahan’s wife Honor, a Northern Ireland girl and former Today programme producer who started her own …

The broadening inkblot: Self-improvement for people who read newspapers (and blogs…)

Paul Evans on December 8, 2010, 1:15 pm

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This is a cross post from Miljenko Williams who blogs at 21st Century Fix. It was originally posted on the Political Innovation site here. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a regular lurker around the blogosphere and the longer, cleverer articles on media websites. You may even go further than that and comment occasionally, “Digg”, share or “like” postings on Facebook. And if you’re very clever with your RSS reader, you may have found a way of getting some of …

Churnalism: The Numbers…

Mick Fealty on November 19, 2010, 5:15 pm

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Here’s a nice little prep for tomorrow’s panel discussion from politico.ie. It comes up with some of the same findings as the Tuppenceworth.ie’s blog paper round experiment a few years ago: The study, carried out by postgraduate students in 2010, found that between 11.6% and 21% of newspaper stories across eight major daily publications were mainly or entirely generated by public relations material, and that between 32% and 50% of all stories contained elements of public relations material. The worst …

What’s the point of journalists any more?

Mick Fealty on November 16, 2010, 4:35 pm

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Though Saturday is largely an Unconference and the attendees will be fixing the agenda and timetable on the day (with a bit of healthy pre-event lobbying on the Uservoice site), I’m going to be chairing one whole-event session after lunch on the whole question of the Fourth Estate. We’ve got a democracy that relies on them, at least in part, to provide a counterweight to powerful interests. But their current business model appears to be changing, and we – in …

#Hackgate: An inquiry would go to the detail no one else wants

Mick Fealty on September 6, 2010, 4:49 pm

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I honestly thought we’d seen the last of the (or as Dizzy puts it, the unhacked stupidity of individual politicians) #hackgate scandal last summer… According to a lengthy New York Times piece, apparently not. That said, apart from the onset of a judicial review, apart from evidence from ‘unnamed sources’, I cannot see what distinguishes the current situation from the way it was left last summer. The shabby dealings and evasions of News International are the same now as then… But …

PSNI’s media message/massage/pummelling

Blank on August 25, 2010, 7:39 pm

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Last week Rusty noted how journalist Eammon MacDermott had property confiscated by the PSNI as part of an investigation into armed republican activity in Derry. While some may think the fact he was an ex-prisoner could have influenced the PSNI reaction, British policing has a long history of heavy handedness when it comes to freedom of the press in Ireland. Back in 1999 Ed Moloney faced gaol over refusing to pass on interview notes with William Stobie. Moloney won the …

Bloggers not to blame for the broadening of journalism

Mick Fealty on August 13, 2010, 5:30 pm

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Not sure I agree with everything Malachi says in his oped of earlier this week, but this part is worth repeating, for those who still think there is a war on between MSM and the blogosphere: …there is one big flaw in the perception that bloggers and journalists are at war with each other; they actually feed off each other. They have a symbiotic relationship – and it is changing. It used to be that journalism was a coherent and …

Why intelligent criticism is good for government (and politicians)

Mick Fealty on July 29, 2010, 2:10 pm

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I was uncharacteristically lost for words when I discovered, through Mark Devenport’s latest post, that a senior and highly capable Sinn Fein MLA was using material gleaned from a UK based right wing ginger group (funded so far as we can tell, by non taxpaying British expats) with a known record of rolling together own brand ‘dodgy dossiers’ (see Pete’s post for the detailed links). Adds: Just had one reader contact us to point out that this could be interpreted …