Archive for the ‘Print’ Category

A gossipy week online with Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia suffering at the hands of many of the web’s big boys as his break-up with Rachel Marsden played out on Wikipedia and ebay, of all places, for all the world to see. Whilst he may have set himself up for a fall last year by claiming “Being an Internet rock star is like being a regular rock star, except there’s no sex and drugs” the fiasco illustrates the genuine fame of internet celebs – their love lives now get splashed across the nationals. Valleywag have been thoroughly enjoying the drama and pointed out that Rupert Murdoch can still spot a good story.

TechCrunch came to Jimmy’s defence a few days in, picking a fight with ringleader Valleywag and berating them for their online hounding. Which mirrors – slightly less dramatically – recent discussions around the part to be played in the dramatic fall from grace of Britney Spears, as discussed by Gordon MacMillan today.All serving to remind that the online world shares the same responsibilty as old media in being a content creator, sharer and gatekeeper of information and opinion.

An interesting and entertaining week though and one which illustrates that the power of the blogosphere to influence and disseminate news has never been stronger.

Max Gogarty has started his gap year adventure with a bang, receiving comments and viral spread from the Guardian that the blogosphere’s wittiest comment kings would be proud of.

As Digital Lifestyles rightly said, “we’ve never seen a more vitriolic and frankly funny collection of comments”. Max’s Skins-writing, skinny-jean wearing gap year style was met with 475 lively responses such as “how marvellous, i think i’m going to barf with excitement” – before the mods closed the post.

The follow up from the Guardian’s travel editor today already has a few hundred replies already, and the spread of the story in the last 24 hours has been massive. Max has staked his claim to five minutes of blogosphere fame with two Facebook groups already. It’ll be interesting to see if The Guardian continue with the series, but it certainly seems to have entertained the blogosphere for a few hours, and the comments are worth reading for some Friday entertainment value alone.

That newspapers are “an industry in peril” is not exactly news. But a somewhat morbid report of their woes in the NYT reminds anyone who thought that the likes of Super Tuesday and Beijing 2008 would provide a buffer, that things are not looking good. Gordon Macmillan concludes that whilst TV and the web are enjoying this editorial surge, next year ‘is going to be a bloodbath’.

This is reminiscent of The Guardian’s report into the impact of SEO on the much loved British tabloid headline, which fairly suggested that as much as we might love puns, they don’t work for search. The likes of “No Knobby Bobbie Given A Girl’s Jobby” – check out Steve Hill for the genius explanantion – may be over, but the aim according to Keith Howitt of the Independent on Sunday is simply “to attract and entertain the reader while remaining true to the facts”.

This doesn’t sound that disimilar to the aims of everyone else on the web, a quick look at ProBlogger illustrates the time and thought spent on blog titles. And rightly so, with the scanning of your average reader in the morning surely being even more ruthless than a skim of the papers with all thier images and boxed out quotes? It’s another example of blogging raising the game, with snappy titles setting the pace in search – not to mention keeping the puns alive and well. Examples from the last week With or Without Yahoo! and Brave Britney Spears Nearly Forgotten Amid Your Stupid Election Or Whatever made us laugh, jumped out from cluttered readers and pulled in key hot search terms of the day.

As more and more papers move their focus online, we’re looking forward to the increasing impact of newspaper journalists skills at grabbing our online attention.