Puffbox

Worth reading Gordon Brown’s speech this morning, in which he describes the need for ‘a new type of politics which embraces everyone in this nation, not just a select few… a politics that takes a hard look at the tough questions, not the easy path of short-term slogans.’ OK, where’s he going with this?

‘The power of progressive politics rests in the empowerment of the people it serves. I believe that progressive politics in this country will only truly succeed in shaping a better Britain if we actively reach out to new ideas, find new ways of engaging the people in our communities, and then build a consensus for change.

‘I believe that we need new ways of reaching out. New ways of listening to people. New ways of consulting on new ideas. New ways of engaging in a dialogue and deliberation. And thus new ways of building our democracy for the future.’

Things kick off this week with the introduction of a concept of ‘citizens juries’: one this week on children, another next week on crime. Then we’ll get ‘nine simultaneous citizens juries on the NHS – one in each region – linked by video.’ (However, as Nick Robinson points out, No10 is a bit short on detail, and I’m not seeing an application form on the No10 site.) We’ll also get a mega-jury ‘composed of a representative sample of the British people… to formulate the British statement of values’, and a revival of the cross-party Speaker’s Conference, to look at various aspects of the electoral and democratic process.

All good: whilst I doubt these juries will change much, it certainly makes a positive statement. It’s just a shame the political coverage will concentrate mainly on (a) the lack of a denial about an early election, and (b) the involvement of certain individuals in Brown’s commissions of all the talents.

Iain Dale reckons we could be on for a 4 October general election, basing his speculation on activity at the Department of Health: ‘Tuesday is apparently full of big health events but these are now in doubt as No. 10 have apparently cleared their diary.’ Well, he’s right that Tuesday has a lot of DH announcements lined up… but I’m actually involved in some of it (of which more later…), and at the time of writing, nobody’s told me that Tuesday is off. I’ll actually be at DH on Tuesday, so if it happens, I’ll report live. Can’t say fairer than that.

Five News editor David Kermode tells the Sky blog why he’s abandoning what he describes as ‘contrived’ editing techniques. I’m all for honesty and integrity, but I’m not convinced that the Great British Public felt betrayed by the use of the ‘noddy’. As an editorial method of moving from shot to shot, when you only had one decent camera at your disposal, and a limited amount of time with your interviewee, it worked – and it didn’t/doesn’t exactly try to be something it isn’t.

True, ordinary viewers are becoming more familiar with editing techniques: but this includes the notion, for example, of ‘transitions’ in PowerPoint – a visual trick that gets you from slide to slide. If anything, I’d have expected the viewers to start trying advanced methods like ‘the noddy’ on their home movies. And they’d probably have felt dead proud of themselves.

We’re in danger of getting this all out of proportion. If we want to develop public confidence in news broadcasting, how about banning the ridiculous ‘it’s 10pm / the weekend / both, and I’m live outside an empty office block‘ two-ways instead?

Quick update:  Newsnight editor Peter Barron is on a similar wavelength. ‘If the outcome of this debate is that viewers end up being distracted because they can see all the joins, then we will surely have shot ourselves in the foot.’ Hear hear.

The Sky-BBC spat heats up, with Sky News chief John Ryley responding on the Sky editors’ blog. I’m delighted to see him making use of this new communication channel, incidentally: where the Beeb have got into the habit of using their Editors Blog to respond to coverage and criticism, it’s been disappointingly rare from Osterley.

It’s a curious response, in truth. Not much of a defence, certainly not a retraction, and not the credo it might have been. ‘Such editorial decisions are always difficult judgements involving a balance of moral and journalistic imperatives,’ he writes. ‘Those are things that we take very seriously at Sky News, and it is healthy that these issues should be debated.’ And..?

From there, it’s really just an anti-BBC rant. Yes, the game’s punchline was that the hostage was doomed anyway. Yes, the BBC has broadcast first and asked questions later, with unfortunate consequences. But bringing it up in this context just seems a bit petty. This is an opportunity for Sky to spell out exactly what it stands for, and exactly why it’s different to News 24. I’m not hearing it so far. And if both sides have dropped the gloves, it’s a rare chance to do so in plain, blunt terms.

It’s a bit of a shock to see ‘DIANA‘ in the primary navigation over at Sky News. Memorial service aside, it’s not exactly ‘news’? It’s clearly building on the success (?) of their special MADELEINE channel… but today’s lead headline (‘Madeleine still missing’) shows how difficult it must be to keep filling a news-optimised layout.

The lessons learned should hopefully inform the development of a ‘dossier’ template for big stories on the wane. Lots of backgrounders, plenty of multimedia, easy access to the as-we-told-it stories, with only the occasional new update. But for now, I guess they’re making use of the tools available to them, whether or not they’re ideal.

There’s some fascinating fallout from the role-playing game at the Edinburgh Television Festival, which asked our major broadcasters how they would handle a live hostage situation. Basically, the channels were asked if they’d show live pictures: Sky said yes, the BBC said yes but with a ‘significant’ delay. The conclusion: the hostage was killed, because the kidnappers had seen that they were about to get stormed.

The Press Gazette effectively told Sky’s John Ryley he had (imaginary) blood on his hands. And it isn’t too hard to guess who his fellow panellist, the BBC’s Craig Oliver, has in mind when he says:

In the end we were shown a clip of a dead hostage. He’d been killed because the kidnappers had access to television, and had been tipped off by broadcasters other than the BBC that the building was about to be stormed.

Writing on the BBC Editors blog, Craig does a fair job of justifying his decisions in the game; but inevitably it’s an artificial situation, and one wonders how the Beeb could remain on the moral high ground if Sky (plus presumably Fox), Al Jazeera, and (I guess) CNN were showing live pictures.

The ensuing debate makes for interesting reading. Should the BBC (and others) obey requests for a media blackout? And how does that square with the BBC-bashers who continue to accuse the corporation of left-wing bias? Should we expect higher standards of the BBC as a public sector organisation? But how could they resist competitive pressure? For all the idealistic statements, I bet they’d go live as soon as they felt it was justifiable.

I gave up. A couple of weeks back, I turned my mono-boot Vista laptop into a mono-boot Ubuntu laptop with a screwed-up Vista configuration. I tried everything I could think of, but couldn’t get Vista back… so my laptop is currently on its way to Acer’s support HQ in Plymouth, where its hard disk will be re-flashed to its original Vista factory setup. Here ends another excursion into Linux territory.

Inevitably, my fingers have been burned, and I’m reluctant to try it all again. To be honest, I’ll probably wait until Ubuntu releases its next edition in October, and install it to a (bootable) USB memory stick. I really like the ability to boot into Ubuntu… in some situations, it’s just better than Vista, simple as that. But I can’t risk losing Vista again. I can chuck a USB stick in the laptop bag, giving me the best of both worlds, at a cost of under £20 from Amazon (for a whopping 4GB).

Oh, and to answer the inevitable question: no, I don’t think Ubuntu is ready for the desktop. Not quite, not yet. But I certainly am not betting against them. Let’s see what October brings.

They reckon it’s all legit, so I don’t feel bad about pointing to French-based Deezer: free music without download. It’s a bit like the iTunes store, in fact it’s very like the iTunes store… but without any nasty payment business. A Flash-based music player, with Ajax searching so the playback isn’t interrupted.

I guess they’re paying royalties out of advertising revenue, but I’ve been using it for a day or two now, and haven’t clicked a single advert. It doesn’t have every song you might search for (especially if you’re the wrong side of 30), and quality can be variable, but it hits more often than it misses. All bad news for legit music sellers – especially since it isn’t exactly difficult to find software to save any streaming audio to local MP3.

Sky News is republishing Twitter updates from someone called Christine Brogan, a British backpacker in Cancun as the hurricane hits. Doing some quick research (ie Facebook), it looks like she’s just a mate of someone in the newsroom. Which makes me wonder, purely hypothetically… if a news organisation spotted someone tweeting about a news event, is it ethical (or indeed sensible?) for them to republish the stream on their own pages? Twitter says it ‘encourage(s) users to contribute their creations to the public domain or consider progressive licensing terms’, and I don’t see any copyright statement on the typical Twitter page.

I had heard whispers about this, but now it’s out in the open… Sky News has b-i-g online plans for the next general election, whenever it might come. They’re currently offering a PhD scholarship at City University in ‘Citizen Media / User-Generated Content’, with a specific role in mind:

For the first year of their PhD the appointee will work closely with Sky News on an innovative project to recruit several hundred “citizen journalists” to report on the next UK general election campaign. The project aims to allow contributors to do more than simply give their opinion; instead they will be expected to write stories, take pictures and possibly record video.

 

The appointee’s role would be to work closely with Sky News to recruit suitable contributors, mentor them and guide them in creating the right sort of content, and manage their contributions. … For approximately 4 days a week the appointee will be based within the Sky News website operation, and will also work with the Sky News Election campaign team.

In other words – Sky’s killer idea for general election coverage is to hand it over to the bloggers. It makes a lot of sense to me: politics works on blogs, and the public is disillusioned with conventional political coverage. Sky has wisely spotted an opportunity to become the home of political blogging in the UK… and should look for ways to develop the kind of community interaction that can keep it interesting. (I won’t say any more for now…)

Applications to be in by 31 August, but be warned: the £13k salary is not guaranteed after the first year. Er, I guess the lucky winner had better hope Gordon isn’t planning an early election. 🙂