Apparently I’ve been tagged twice for this blog meme idea started by Matt Wardman, so you can see my thoughts on Labour’s new leader below the fold. I’ve deliberately avoided foreign policy, and not laboured exclusively on his handling of the economy. I’ve been tagged by Anthony over at OpenDemocracy, so here’s my late offering: ...
Interesting to see how things shift in a short time ago. A year ago, Guido was getting attacked for (admittedly amongst other things) his attacks on the lobby system at Westminster. Now the venerable Peter Wilby is taking up Guido’s argument with a will. In parts it chimes heavily with my own CiF piece earlier ...
However unnerving it is to hear a politician harangue, however gently, however intelligently, the free press in a free society, it is hard to argue against Tony Blair when he says that the British media has become “a feral beast”. ...
Whilst we’ve seen a slow (and radical) shift in the way British papers began by dipping their toes tentatively in the blogosphere water. Now, it seems de rigeur for most of the mainstream. Irish papers have still, by and large, to take the plunge. The Bivings Report has some starter tips for nervous editors, particularly ...
Kevin March employs Onora O’Neill’s Reith Lecture formula to identify a major flaw with lobby journalism: it is a prime piece of non-assessable communication. Why? Marsh writes: The formula: “the minster said this … but what he really meant was this …” is such a familiar formula in political coverage, we journalists don’t even question ...
One interesting aspect in the wash up to the Republic’s election was a minor furore over alleged anti government bias in the Irish media’s coverage. It was sparked by Bertie Ahern’s comments on the Friday count night, that journalists had had a job to do “in return for good pay and expenses”, implying that undue ...
If tragedy appals and evokes empathy, then happier events often give way to pleasant banality. Yesterday was of the latter kind. There seemed little to add to the promise of Northern Ireland’s new political leadership to build a new future, other than to wish them well in realising that promise and let them get on ...
This essay appears in this month’s edition of Prospect magazine. In it I’ve tried to chart the lengthy political career of Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland’s single most enduring political figure whose career spans the period before during and after the Troubles. ...
Front page of the LA Times yesterday, the Digg website is facing a revolution because it tried to ban its users from recommending an illegal code that helps people pirate copies of online movies. ...
In March I was asked to respond informally to a presentation by George Osbourne at the RSA on the need to for government to listen to and respond to those outside the official political and professional cadres in central government. The main thrust of his speech related to the economic and technological good sense of ...
Simon at Irishelection.com ably demonstrates the difference between good political PR and bad… Good is when things happen like you say they will, and bad, well, is when people remember if they don’t… ...
There is much to be said for some of Polly Toynbee’s argument in her Bagehot Lecture, organised by Queen Mary College recently, and entitled “The art of the column”. Particularly when she argued: ...
It’s more than four years since political bloggers in the US first exerted their considerable collective power. Then they took their first political scalp: the resignation of Republican majority Senate leader Trent Lott over politically embarrassing remarks that were, at first, largely ignored in the mainstream press. ...
According to the Economist, the answer is yes. As it notes, the blogads model only contributes minorly towards costs rather than generates income. The money making blogs in the States it mentions have signed up to the more targeted kind of ad service that MessageSpace offers. ...
Slugger got a first link and recommend from Doc Searls himself for the piece on the Oireachtas ban on blogging at work. ...