The Olympics mean a lot to me. I have seen others run and it inspired me to come here. It is amazing, not like the meets. There are all the athletes from all the sports 
Posts Tagged ‘News’
Don’t write TV off as a news medium yet
February 19th, 2010
I recently watched the film Frost/Nixon which is a dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon.
As a quick bit of background for those who aren’t familiar with the Nixon Interviews, in 1977 (three years after his resignation), Nixon granted British journalist Sir David Frost an exclusive series of interviews for which he was paid $600,000. The interviews began on March 23, 1977 and lasted 12 days. They were taped for two hours a day, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, for a total of 28 hours and 45 minutes. The interviews were were edited into four programs, each 90 minutes long.
The premiere episode drew 45 million viewers, the largest television audience for a political interview in history — a record which still stands today.
For those who haven’t seen the film, it is a brilliant demonstration of the power of TV as a news medium. No other media would have been able to capture the “cascade of candor”, as Frost termed it, when Nixon said the line: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”, effectively giving the US public the admission of guilt that they so desperately craved.
Today so much emphasis is placed on social media, that as an industry we need to be careful not to prematurely write-off media that can still be incredibly powerful for a person or brand. Very recently we secured an interview for a client of ours on Sky News, and the next day their phone did not stop ringing with new business enquiries. We mustn’t forget that audiences can still be reached via linear TV.
An interesting statistic is that average daily hours of television viewing rose to 3.94 hours in Q4 2009, driving 2009 figures to the highest since 2002, according to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s latest Trends in Television Report. TV consumption is on the up, and remains to be taken seriously as a news channel.
Finally, I leave you with a great six minute video on how Richard Nixon turned the media into exaggerated fearmongers. It’s not completely relevant to the post, but well worth watching.
Bad news sells. Is social media changing this?
February 12th, 2010
This week I caught an interview with Alastair Campbell on ITV’s Loose Women, promoting his new book Maya. Within the interview Campbell (who formerly wrote for the Daily Mirror) suggested that social networking is inverting the core principle of newspaper journalism, i.e. bad news sells, and replacing it with a more balanced view of the world.
In my view he’s right. Traditionally we might have bought our favourite tabloid or broadsheet on the way to work, or selected the paper with the most grabbing front page headline. Pre-social media, we’d have been blissfully unaware of how our intake of news was being controlled by an editorial agenda that dictates bad news sells. Journalists are trained in how to tease out of any story an angle that conveys fear, sex, drama etc. A story that simply reports ‘good news’ would never get past any half-decent news editor.
Today however, ’social’ media means that we have access to news that has not been written by journalists or broadcasters. Many high profile bloggers have no journalist training, and so take a much fresher, unbiased approach to news reporting.
Websites such as Delicious and Digg enable people to bookmark and share content from the highest profile blog through to the most obscure and niche. It’s human nature to want to share good news, and so with no motivation to ’sell’, those consuming news through social sites are likely to be faced with more ‘good’ news that then would have been traditionally.
This is good news for brands and the PR industry as a whole. It makes it more possible for a brand to communicate its good news, and if it is liked by its community, the news will be shared. This doesn’t remove the need for a strong news hook, but that hook can now be a positive one.
Is journalist experiment to write news through Facebook and Twitter irresponsible?
January 22nd, 2010
A journalist-style Big Brother has today been announced, whereby five journalists will lock themselves away in a French farmhouse for five days, with access to only Facebook and Twitter as their news sources. The experiment will test the quality of news from the social networking and micro-blogging sites as access to all other areas of the Internet will be banned, along with smartphones, TV, radio and newspapers.
The journalists from Canadian, French, Belgian and Swiss radio stations will be expected to go on the air on their channels to comment on news they have found. But without being able to corroborate their news through usual sources and channels, it remains to be seen whether they will have any news to report!
The RFP French-language public broadcasters association has organised the event, and claims: “Our aim is to show that there are different sources of information and to look at the legitimacy of each of these sources.”
The stakes are high - the experiment is likely to attract a lot of media attention and so the journalists will be under pressure to deliver ‘news’…but at what cost? Will they take the risk of reporting news that has not been properly corroborated by multiple sources? Surely that would be highly irresponsible behaviour for a news organisation.
As I previously documented in a post last year entitled: “Mzinga backlash: Is Twitter a reliable journalist/blogger source?“, Twitter can be an unreliable and liabellous source of news, and hoaxes are commonplace. While it will be interesting to follow the journalists’ findings and experience, I’m not sure I even agree with the point of the experiment as it completely contradicts with the principles of quality journalism.
I imagine it will be very time consuming for the journalists to try and validate stories, and so in particular I will be watching to see whether they are able to deliver ‘breaking news’, or whether it will just be commentary after the event. It will be interesting if the journalists share the criteria they used for corroborating stories i.e. volume of Tweets on the subject.
I’m sure there will be a follow-up post from me when the experiment concludes!
August 11th, 2008
The Olympics is up and running, and if like me you’re interested in the latest news but don’t have access to a TV in your office, a good visual place to start and get the latest breaking reaction from is Dailylife. -
“We started Dailylife because we think publishers should be able to offer their readers the entire web of news, and for readers that news should be less work and more fun. We simplify the complex news landscape, making it a personal, visceral experience instead of a daily chore.”
The site is split up into articles, photos, topics and quotes. The articles have related stories attached to them so you can read more about a particular story from another news source. Photos and quotes are probably my favourite parts of the site. Some of the images are stunning and give you a real sense of occasion and drama, and by hovering over the image you also get a text box that tells you the story behind the image. The quotes section is also a nice addition with some memorable quotes given by top competitors.
in Earthtimes.org said Tyson Gay
If you’re in need of some more Olympic resources check out The Torch Has Arrived - Beijing 2008
Weekly social media and web 2.0 news round up for week ending 18th of April
April 18th, 2008
We have been scouring the blogosphere all week for the best hot social media and web 2.0-related news and resources. We have also added all the new links to the Liberate Media resource/research page, - it’s a little slow to load but well worth the wait!
Twitter: news/resources
James Karl Buck Twitters his way out of Egypt Jailhouse
Twitter Spy - Twitter public time line in real time
Summize Realtime Twitter Search
Blogging: news/resources
10 Easy Ways to Get in The Habit of Blogging
More Practical Tips For Starting A Corporate Blog
General social media: news/resources
Social Media: Tools the alpha geeks use
Real People Don’t Have Time for Social Media
Building a Popular Social Media Profile: Seven Essential Characteristics
Get off Twitter, Lay Off the Blogs, and Put Some Thought Back Into Your Email Campaigns
Etiquette For A Social Media World
YouTube Dominates Video More than Google Dominates Search
Social Media To Create Social Media Training - social media training wiki
edopter.com: social trendcasting - discover and share the next big trend
12 Tips for Getting Your Startup Featured on Mashable
South Africa’s First Social Media Press Release - The Standard Bank Pro20 Series (cricket)
Second Life resource list - is it still a good place to build brand?