Since I live-blogged a darts match, I'm in no position to chuck rocks, but can I just point out that the Guardian is live-blogging Jeff Stelling's debut as presenter of Countdown*. New media; new rules I guess. As a friend says "This makes me happy!" And so it should.
*Note to American readers: a long-running tea-time letters and numbers quiz show popular with pensioners, students and the bedridden.
Lord knows, we all blunder from time to time. Still, this is pretty impressive:
Journalists, of course, are very fond of demanding accountability from their subjects but, quite conveniently if also naturally, reject any suggestion that they be held to such standards themselves. I can't, off hand, think of a pundit fired for being wrong all the time. It certainly doesn't happen often. That's not to suggest that the Times should divest themselves of Mr Kaletsky's services, but readers should probably not treat his pronouncements any more seriously than they would the horoscopes. I dare say this applies to other economics "experts" too.
[Hat-tip: Private Eye]
I suppose it must have seemed a neat idea at the time, but Dan Drezner is absolutely correct: Bono's debut column for the New York Times is simply gibberish*. I guess one of the perks of celebrity is being able to find a publisher for nonsense that would, quite correctly, be rejected out of hand were it submitted by an average hack. Like Dan, I've no idea what point Bono is trying to make beyond a) he knew Frank Sinatra and b) people like Sinatra's songs.
*And that's after it was edited. Did no-one at the NYT pause to ask "Hang on, why are we printing this tripe?" Or did they say: "This will be great blog-fodder..."
For once. Also, for once, good news for a newspaper. Colin Freeman, the Sunday Telegraph's chief foreign correspondent has been freed 40 days after he and his photographer, Jose Cendon, were kidnapped by Somali pirates. BBC report here; brief piece by Colin here.
*Granted, if you're actually Somali the news is, generally speaking, probably as lousy as ever.
The paradox of this scene was that the Obama campaign’s communications strategy was predicated in part on an aggressive indifference to this insider set. Staff members were encouraged to ignore new Web sites like The Page, written by Time’s Mark Halperin, and Politico, both of which had gained instant cachet among the Washington smarty-pants set. “If Politico and Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters. He said his least favorite words in the English language were, “I saw someone on cable say this. . . .”
Actually, I think that's a little unfair on Politico, but there's something to this nonetheless. Politico and Halperin and plenty of others have every incentive in the world to come up with fresh, counter-intuitive, let's-throw-this-against-the-wall-and-see-what-happens analysis; hence a political campaign might best be advised to do everything it can to ignore all this froth and sound and hubbub.
Ah, it's that time of year again! Yup, the splendid blog Regret the Error rounds up the most entertaining newspaper corrections of the year. Some of my favourites:
The Daily Mail was among the newspapers to report that David Gest contracted herpes from Liza Minnelli on their wedding night. Not so!
From the West Australian:
The Guardian:
The Guardian (again):
And, of course, the Daily Star:
Via Megan McArdle, I see that the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press are taking a novel approach to the malaise that's crippling newspapers across America (and Britain): make it much more difficult for people to buy your product. At first you may think that this is so counter-intuitive that it must be brilliant. But it's not: it's every bit as stupid (I think!) as it sounds.
The Motor City papers are apparently only going to deliver papers to their readers' homes three days out of every seven. The theory, as I understand it, is that all this printing and delivering is too expensive to be justified on lighter advertising days such as Monday and Tuesday. In future, then, Detroiters will have to find a news-stand to buy the paper or, of course, read it online.
Now, sure, advertising revenue is falling off a cliff at the moment and there's no prospect of a recovery in the short-to-medium term. And I'm equally sure that some bright management types at Gannett (the papers' parent company) have done some sums and found a way of presenting this as a bold and exciting step that will revitalise the businesses. But I'll bet you the case is hooey nonetheless.
Readers are creatures of habit. And habits, once lost, are very hard to regain. That's to say that in many ways the key to holding on to circulation, let alone building it, does not lie in attracting new readers, but in persuading people who currently buy your paper two or three or four days a week to take it more frequently. (There's also, of course, the thing of trying to woo back former readers - but that's an even more difficult task.)
The Detroit papers, by contrast, are assuming that people who suddenly don't receive the paper Monday through Wednesday will continue to purchase it on advertising-heavy Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. It seems much more likely to me, however, that readers will become accustomed to not receiving the paper early in the week and that this will, eventually, persuade them that they're not missing too much if they cease getting it delivered on Thursday, Friday and Sunday as well.
After all, if you can live without the paper some days, perhaps you can live without it on other days too? Maybe you don't actually miss it at all? Perhaps you're even secretly relieved you no longer have to feel as though you must wade through the paper each day? It could be that just getting the paper on Sundays is enough. The rest of the time you'll manage fine without the hard-copy, profitable paper edition. You didn't realise, did you, that buying the paper was such an easy habit to break? Well, it turns out it is.
And since print advertising remains vastly more profitable than online advertising, the costs of printing and delivering the paper on lighter advertising days act, essentially, as loss-leaders for the fat, ad-heavy, profitable days. But once you tell the public that, though they're used to being able to get beans every day, they'll now only get beans three days a week, don't be surprised if the demand for beans decreases. The punters will find something else and it won't necessarily be the alternative you hope they'd plump for. And of course, if the readers lose the habit and Thursday and Friday and Sunday circulation falls then so too, in the end, does your advertising revenue. Make that, your profitable advertising.
Sure, you might gain online readers but the modest revenue gains you make on the online swings are likely to be outweighed by the losses you incur on the print-edition roundabouts.
All this will be invalidated once someone figures out how to make online advertising pay, but that day hasn't arrived yet and nor, frankly, does it seem imminent. The industry may be in a parlous state and something may need to be done but that doesn't mean that anything is the something that must be done. In other words, this Detroit ploy seems* a move that's too clever by half and, consequently, is deeply stupid.
*Of course, I'm not privy to the actual numbers involved, but making your product worse or making it harder or less attractive to buy does not strike me as a particularly canny business plan. As always, however, I could be talking -or writing - through my hat.
Is such that, as you know, there's no need to bribe the fellow. From Simon Hoggart's Guardian column today:
A colleague of the late Raymond Jackson, "Jak" of the London Evening Standard, had an interesting tale. Jak was famous for including the names of firms - restaurants, pubs, even skip hire companies - in his cartoons. He would then sell the originals to the people mentioned, so getting two substantial fees for each drawing. What I hadn't realised is that he used to pre-sell the slot. He'd ring up Knight, Frank & Rutley, for instance, and ask if they wanted to appear as the estate agent that day. Then he'd call Strutt & Parker and see if they offered more. Only when the auction was over would he start on the drawing.
Doubtless one is supposed to disapprove of this sort of thing.
Commenter Rab O'Ruglen doesn't have much sympathy for the crisis afflicting the Tartan press:
I know that this is a point much-cherished by many SNP supporters, who chafe at what they perceive to be the press's bias against the party. But it can only be a keenly pertinent point if it is, like, true.
First, there is not, at present, and, a couple of rogue polls aside, ever been a majority in favour of independence. If one assumes that, roughly speaking, at any given time somewhere between 25 and 40% of voters actually truly support independence, any newspaper that endorses the idea risks alienating the majority of its readers. Now if you could guarantee that all SNP voters would flock to buy a pro-independence paper then you might have a commercial argument for endorsing the idea. But you can't make any such guarantee. Are SNP voters in Glasgow going to purchase the Scotsman if the Edinburgh paper supports independence? This seems pretty unlikely.
Furthermore, it's worth recalling that the press is vastly less hostile towards the SNP than it used to be. The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Sunday Herald all endorsed the nationalists at the last Holyrood election. Granted, that had a good deal to do with the failures and tedium of the Lbour-Lib Dem coalition and granted, too, that these were not endorsements of independence at all. But still.
Finally, the idea that the Scottish press exists "for the propagation of right-wing propaganda" is entirely laughable, given that there isn't a single conservative paper in the country. No, not even the Scotsman. And SoS has certainly moved towards the left since the days when I wrote editorials for the paper.
And a last point: if no newspaper supports independence, that's as much a reflection of the SNP's failure to make an entirely persuasive argument as it is of any proprietorial hostility towards the party and its Big Idea.
Another sign of the times: every single employee of the Glasgow Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times was sacked today and told to reapply for their jobs (on changed - that is, less favourable - terms and conditions of course) if they hope to have some sort of a future in newspapers. Or at least at the Herald Group. Early indications are that the company wants to cut the workforce by something like 20%.
But journalists and readers alike should not fret:
Managing director Tim Blott said: "We are creating an efficient operation fit for the 21st Century which will provide even more compelling and unique content for readers of all three titles and our websites.
"We are committed to producing vibrant and relevant newspapers and websites and see a bright future for The Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times and their digital versions.
Why should anyone doubt this?
Standard disclaimer: newspapers have, generally speaking, been lucky over the years. Or rather, there are plenty of other industries and trades that have seen plenty of this sort of stuff before. So there ought not to be too much special pleading from hacks, but, still, this is sad, depressing, even infuriating stuff.
For those of you interested in Scottish politics, it's not a bad thing to be able, not before time, to welcome the country's newspapers to the blogosphere. So, huzzahs for The Steamie then, a new blog devoted to tartan politics written by the political journos at the Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News. I think they're having what's known as a "soft launch" and it will doubtless take them some time to become accustomed to blogospheric ways, but it's good to see them swimming in these waters...
I've too much respect for my friends at The Times to ask if Rupert Murdoch dictated that this Peter Brookes cartoon appear on the paper's front page today...
The Thunderer's leader column makes it pretty clear, I think, that the Times will not be endorsing Labour at the next election:
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown both promised reform of public services that might have allowed the quality of services to be maintained at a lower rate of spending. In the absence of that reform, high spending and the maintenance of a large public sector workforce became the only way of maintaining servive levels. Yet such spending has proven unsustainable.
It is this which led Labour to its fateful decision. At the last two elections it contrasted spending growth with an offer of tax and spending cuts from the Conseratives that it characterised as ideological and unrealistic. This cannot be the dividing line at the next election because Labour will itself have to restrain spending and will be offering only tax rises. So Labour has chosen a different dividing line. It will fight, as it used to, partly on taxing the rich.
The deep international crisis would have been difficult for any Government. For this one - with excessive borrowing already underway - the challenge is particularly severe. It has mortgaged the future on the ideas of the past.
This is the thing that Labour MPs such as Tom Harris do not appear to grasp: everyone appreciates that this is an international crisis, what people are angry about - and not unreasonably so - is that Britain appears more, not less, vulnerable than all its peers. No wonder folk are upset that government debt is set to rise to 57% of GDP - a figure not seen even in the desperate times of the late 1970s.
Of course, in 1976, Jim Callaghan told the Labour Party conference: "We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists."
Apparently it does now.
One of the things that distinguishes a good columnist from the ordinary, run-of-the-mill shill is the ability to treat their own party's failings as severely as they would condemn the blunders committed by the other lot. Similarly, there's something to be said for the rigour that consistency demands. Polly Toynbee may be correct (though I'd wager she isn't) that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling played a blinder on Monday, but does anyone imagine that if it was a Conservative government presiding over this recession she would write anything as, I don't know, cheerful and complacent, as this?
On the other hand, if La Toynbee is correct and this is indeed the moment in which Labour unfurled a moth-eaten banner proclaiming "social justice" then the result of the next election is not in doubt.
I'm pleased to see that Jack Shafer is calling the New York Post's sudden admiration for President-elect Barack Obama a fine example of the time-honoured tabloid tradition of the Reverse Ferret. (See TDL here and here for more on the importance of ferrets to tabloid newspapers). But there's nothing terribly surprising here: Obama is enormously popular and the NYP publishes in a city that voted for the new guy overwhelmingly. It would be nuts to be anything other than gushingly enthusiastic about the new President's prospects.
Remember too that the tabloids can't live on cynicism and manufactured outrage alone. No, they need a thick streak of sentiment too. Hence their enduring love for have-a-go heroes and rags-to-riches stories. Mawkish gloop sells too.The news business is, as Rupert Muroch might remind you, also part of the entertainment business. And what that means is that, sometimes at least, the punter is king: what the mugs want, the mugs get. It never pays for a tabloid to move too far from public opinion. The best tabloid editors - and Kelvin McKenzie, originator of the phrase "Reverse Ferret" was, in his own gruesome fashion, one of the best - never forget this.
Right now, Obamamania makes commercial and political sense. It's also cost-free since, of course, the President-elect hasn't had time to disappoint anyone yet. Consistency may be a virtue, but it's not one much honoured by tabloid newspapers. And nor should it be.
[Hat-tip: Englishman in New York]
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