Archives for Journalism

On the OLPC Movement... (February 20, 2008) A couple of months ago I was asked by Icon Magazine to write a review of the OLPC XO laptop for the developing world. You can read the finished article in their January issue or on their site (OLPC review...

This is not a brothel... (August 28, 2007) As has probably become clear recently, I'm currently not particularly well-inclined towards people who work in public relations - particularly the particularly unscrupulous ones that spam me with press releases and work ardently to try and persuade me to talk...

On Monocle, Nat Torkington & Place branding... (August 22, 2007) While reading the new issue of incomprehensibly fascinating magazine Monocle--which has a parallel web presence orchestrated by ex-boss Dan Hill that stubbornly (and equally incomprehensibly from my perspective) refuses to include any content whatsoever from the magazine--I stumble upon...

On Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science"... (September 12, 2005) While I'm talking about the Guardian (reports from friends within the printing presses are that it's looks beautiful), i thought I should probably mention an article that I read on Thursday last week which I thought was one of the...

On how journalists write about webloggers... (May 29, 2005) There's an article in the Sunday Times today called Golden rules for blogging clever which features a few choice morsels of salient quotage from some bloke not a million miles away from this weblog. For this reason alone I recommend...

Wikiproxy "enhances" BBC News Online... (October 4, 2004) So my old boss, bluntly, often talks quite a lot of balls. Having got that out of the way, I should also add that on occasion he does come up with some pretty bloody interesting (if almost certainly soon to...

I have no opinion about this whatsoever... (July 13, 2004) I have no opinion about this whatsoever. Here are just four links in a row, presented in a reverse-chronological (most recent first) fashion with no attempt whatsoever to make a point, which nonetheless are prefaced with a proviso that any...

ETech Adjunct: Weblogs and Journalism... (February 9, 2004) I'm watching the panel on the role of journalism as part of the Digital Democracy and it's the first teach-in of the day that feels like a teach-in. Nonetheless, I'm not sure that I'm finding it terribly useful - probably...

What I'm faxing to my MP... (January 31, 2004) What follows is a letter that I'm sending through to my MP via FaxYourMP.com. If you feel strongly about this issue too, then I would ask you to consider expressing your sentiments accordingly. The views expressed - of course -...

On Wonkette and the rest of Gawker media... (January 24, 2004) So Nick Denton's Gawker media has released its latest offspring into the world, and so far (particularly after the enormous success of fleshbot) it doesn't look like much of a contender. Wonkette has been described as Gawker for DC (by...

On 'two years' of weblogs... (August 11, 2003) Every single time I get asked by someone for my opinion on the whole "weblogs as journalism" thing, I give pretty much the same response. First things first - there are differences. That should be pretty obvious. One clear difference...

The Balkanisation of Blogdex... (July 29, 2003) The last couple of days have seen a Daypop and Blogdex Top 40s that are totally overwhelmed by political articles from the States. If it wasn't for the fact that many of these articles are concerned with the war in...

Stop bitching. Make it better... (June 3, 2003) The main problem I have with the weblog-related positions of professional writers like Bill Thompson and professional trolls like Andrew Orlowski is that we've had all these debates so many times before. Debate around A-list cliques has existed for years...

Don't write off Conversations as a geek toy... (April 14, 2003) So there's an article in the Guardian today about UpMyStreet. The article is called Street Plight and aims to understand why the company is in administration. Now generally, it's a pretty flattering article - and a fairly accurate one -...

Designing for extreme readers... (March 23, 2003) So a mainstream news site is often comprised of many hundreds - thousands - of individual news stories. These stories are mostly designed to fit into a pretty clear taxonomy which reflects "what the news site is for". This taxonomy...

The Ostrich of Journalism... (February 21, 2003) God what a stupid article. What a profoundly stupid article. I mean let's not even start with the condemnation of Google as the closest thing to an online Superpower, because while there may be some truth to it, at the...

If this truly is the future of Google news, then the project I've been trying to persuade people to undertake for the last six - eight months is dead. (September 22, 2002) According to Google Blog there's potentially a new front-page emerging for Google News. The current page can be viewed at news.google.com, and its apparent replacement is here. To be honest, this news doesn't fill me with the love and happiness...

An Englishman in Moscow (August 18, 2002) I think we'll start with a little background... Several years ago when I first moved to London, I stayed with an ex of mine who lived in Belsize Park with his boyfriend of the time. They had a spare room,...

Proposal for a new relationship between weblog and mainstream publishers (August 6, 2002) The Situation:Imagine, if you will, that a prominent web magazine had decided to start hosting Weblogs. Imagine if shortly afterwards another prominent online publisher said they were doing the same. And then imagine if rumours abounded that they weren't going...

XCOM2002 and TAKING IT OUTSIDE (June 9, 2002) An attempt to write a huge piece on my experiences of XCOM and TAKING IT OUTSIDE, at which I sat on three panels and left very very tired.

Keith Waterhouse on weblogs? (August 9, 2001) Writing a good weblog can be, at times, much like writing a column for a newspaper. I've got an old article on writing a column which I'd like to put up in a public place. It's by Keith Waterhouse -...

On back-biting, sniping, competition and awe... (November 14, 2000) If I told you that there was a kind of person who wrote on a regular basis, was obsessed by the internet rankings of their writing, commented regularly on the work of other writers and tried to artificially improve their...

On 'Balanced' and 'Impartial' Journalism... (September 14, 2000) I've just read this astonishing article on a conference held by journalists about the reporting of gay issues: ["'Gay' journalists turn activists"] At this conference the question of "balance" came up - the question was Do we have to present...