once were journalists
Posted in journalism, work, writing on Dec 29th, 2007
There’s a set of responsibilities incumbent on a journalist that needn’t trouble a copywriter, PR executive or marketing assistant. The latter are generally assumed to have an agenda, with a message to sell or place, and their words regarded accordingly. The former should be writing for the reader.
Given the above, it’s not always surprising that [...]
Posted in journalism on Dec 20th, 2007
Everybody’s going green. Green is the new black and the next best thing and the big new idea and the dog’s bananas. Green is great.
In 2007 as in no previous year, brand managers appear to have really grasped the green nettle. For some it’s about specific product opportunity to be ‘leveraged’, for others it’s just [...]
Posted in journalism, online journalism on Dec 19th, 2007
Christmas. Always a busy time of year for journalists. If you’re on a monthly you get to go mental until the office closes for the Christmas week, and if you’re on almost anything else you’ll be brushing mince pie crumbs from your cardigan and heading into the office on 27th December. If you’re short-staffed you’ll [...]
Posted in journalism on Dec 14th, 2007
At first glance, this headline would appear to be fairly major news. The sort of thing that one might expect to see mentioned in any casual sampling of reliable internet news sources. Something, I’d even go so far as to say, that could knock Diana off the front page of the Express.
As it turns out, [...]
Posted in journalism on Dec 10th, 2007
One of the things that troubled both Charlie and me before we came to work at Spannerworks was the very idea of a journalist working for a marketing company. That and the idea that we’d never again be able to listen to Bill Hicks and laugh without reservation.
Neither of us was sure exactly how, indeed [...]
Posted in journalism on Nov 27th, 2007
Wikipedia entries are case-sensitive.
Witness MIME, a discussion of all-round email encoding cleverness, versus mime…
…well, the picture says it all.
Posted in journalism, online journalism on Nov 23rd, 2007
A while back, the BBC caused a ripple of excitement (at least for this blogger) when it started to furnish stories with social bookmarking links.
Far more significantly, perhaps, BBC News has just embedded a YouTube video directly into an article.
I’m not a regular reader of the BBC’s entertainment stories, but this is the first time [...]
Posted in journalism on Nov 1st, 2007
What got me thinking about Mac vs PC deathmatches was a weekend spent researching and writing a How it Works article on games consoles.
Though I worked in games, I’ve never had the opportunity to write about them (other than an annual pilgrimage to cycling management nirvana). Do enough research, though, and things begin to get [...]
Posted in journalism on Oct 28th, 2007
There are people starving, others dying of disease and many millions who are oppressed and victimised, but if there’s one thing that people seem to give a shit about it’s technology. I’m utterly at a loss to explain why.
This isn’t the grumbling of a marginalised old-timer, I should point out. I may (dimly) remember playing [...]
Posted in journalism, online journalism, reading on Oct 19th, 2007
It’s easy to get wonderfully carried away with this whole internet news revolution thing. The argument for it goes something like this: the internet lowers the barriers to participation in the gathering, distribution and discussion of news, and makes information freely accessible to all.
There’s no doubt it’s happening. Consumers are today presented with a wider [...]
I was trying to get a screen grab of Brown doing his trademark goldfish gulp, but now I look it’s more like somebody’s licking his love pump
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