Posted by jameswdcrawford on November 14, 2009 under Journalism | 
The Sun apologised today for spelling incorrectly the name of Jacqui Janes’, who has just lost her son to the war in Afghanistan. A typo is, of course, just a typo unless hours earlier you have crucified the Prime Minister committing this same error. Then it becomes hypocrisy.
Media hypocrisy is usually a strong narrative, so why was it that when The Sun was forced to issue an apology there wasn’t more of an uproar? Especially as ‘Typogate’ had an intriguing subplot of tabloid exploitation.
One would think that competing media outlets would love to stick the boot into The Sun and run a mocking story about their blunder. Yet only The Guardian has published anything of note.
John Prescott didn’t mention it in his blog today either despite sticking it to The Sun in other ways. This might have been out of respect and not wanting to make political capital out of Jacqui Janes’ situation. This makes sense, although bringing up The Sun’s mistake wouldn’t really be seen as further exploitation of a grieving mum, given the wider circumstances and the scale of the row.
Most notably, those folk on Twitter were comparatively quiet on the subject. Twitter users aren’t known to hold back and the social media site has seen plenty of mob rule recently, what with Jan Moir , AA Gill and all sorts of people receiving a battering at the hands of an angry group of dissenting voices.
OK, so the Tweet on the newspaper’s apology is doing the rounds, but The Sun or Jacqui Janes aren’t even trending on Twitter and haven’t been all day. The apology has hardly registered.
The usual Twitter lobbyists and campaigners aren’t encouraging others to humiliate The Sun and show up their hypocrisy. Could it be that Twitter users are now choosing to use their lynch mob tokens a little more sparingly, given recent criticism of ‘mob rule’? There have been a lot of blogs this week stating that Twitter is maturing, based on the slowing subscription to the service, so maybe this lack of noise is a sign that its users are growing up too? Personally I would have been intrigued to have seen this issue ‘go nuclear’. Old Media versus New. It has been a while since the rabble have been roused.
Or is the abstinence of the Twiterati more a statement on Gordon Brown’s popularity? Maybe Twitter users simply don’t want to defend the PM? I’m not sure this is a major factor.
In any case, The Sun’s apology goes further than being a political issue, and highlights shady tabloid journalistic tactics. For that reason I would have liked to see this story make more of an impact. The Sun is less likely to make an apology than Gordon Brown, and this rare action is worth the headlines.
Tags: Alastair Campbell, Gordon Brown, Jacqui Janes, John Prescott, Lynch Mob, Maturity, Mob Rule, Social Media, The Guardian, The Sun, Twitter
Posted by jameswdcrawford on November 8, 2009 under Media |
Could British Libel law be forcing British media out of business and creating a boom in blogs hosted by ISPs in countries which are not under UK court jurisdiction?
This article in today’s Sunday Times about libel media law in the UK, and how it could force American publications out of the British market, is just one of a number of recent stories which have stood out.
Then there was the story on BoingBoing.net about British law firm Wragg and Co, which the blog believes is being tasked with targeting internet forum posters and whistle blowers. It is great for the UK to be a leading centre of excellence, but this is one industry which if left unchecked verges on the sinister.
We also have libel tourists flocking to the UK, as explained in this story in The Times. Surely a surefire sign that the law is getting out of hand.
On the positive side, libel is no longer a criminal offence in the UK but this is a rare positive story.
Are strict libel laws pushing already hard up ‘old media’ print outlets out of business? Not solely because of the cost of litigation, but because blogs and online titles will be willing to take bigger risks? Will I turn to print media for my news or will I go to a blog which has the better stories? The answer is obvious: BLOGS. This is especially so of those blogs which are hosted in other countries which are out of British jurisdiction and can publish largely what they want.
Just look at the BoingBoing story over the Ralph Lauren scandal which I covered a few weeks ago (click here). Would this story have been publishable in the UK?
Posted by jameswdcrawford on September 30, 2009 under Media, Online, PR |
The shift in power which now makes internet advertising a bigger revenue stream than from broadcast media has come quicker than I thought.
The report seems very credible. Although I am always sceptical of ‘data’ from Newspaper Society and the Internet Advertising Bureau, this report seems to be an accurate picture.
The fact that Britain is the first country to reach this tipping point is encouraging too. It is not that often one feels like the UK is blazing a trail.
Full story is below.
Internet overtakes television to become biggest advertising sector in the UK
Record £1.75bn online spend makes UK first major economy to spend more on web ads than TV, says IAB
The UK has become the first major economy where advertisers spend more on internet advertising than on television advertising, with a record £1.75bn online spend in the first six months of the year.
The milestone marks a watershed for the embattled TV industry, the leading ad medium in the UK for almost half a century. It has taken the internet little more than a decade to become the biggest advertising sector in the UK.
UK advertisers spent £1.75bn on internet advertising in the six months to the end of June, a 4.6% year-on-year increase, according to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. To put this in perspective, in 1998, when the IAB first measured internet advertising, just £19.4m was spent online.
The internet now accounts for 23.5% of all advertising money spent in the UK, while TV ad spend accounts for 21.9% of marketing budgets.
The IAB originally predicted that internet ad spend would overtake TV at the end of 2009; however, the crippling advertising recession accelerated this by six months. TV advertising fell about 17% year on year in the first half, to about £1.6bn, according to the report.
The IAB’s figures show that of the total of £1.75bn spent on internet advertising, £1.05bn, or 60%, was spent on search advertising on websites including Google, up 6.8% year on year.
Online classified advertising grew by 10.6% year on year to £385m, about 22% of total internet ad spend. But online display advertising, such as banners on websites, fell by 5.2% year on year, to £316.5m. This was an 18% share of all internet ad spend.
The ray of light within the online display ad sector was the nascent, but rapidly growing, online video advertising sector. The IAB estimated that this sector grew by close to 300% year on year, to almost £12m.
Thinkbox, the UK TV marketing body, has taken exception to the IAB’s figures, arguing that the internet is now mature and diverse and it is inaccurate to collate all the figures as if it is one single medium.
“It is interesting but meaningless to sweep all the money spent on every aspect of online marketing into one big figure and celebrate it,” said Lindsey Clay, marketing director at Thinkbox. “Online marketing spend is made up of many things, including email, classified ads, display ads (including online TV advertising) and, overwhelmingly, search marketing. They should be judged individually.”
Guy Phillipson, the chief executive of the IAB, reckoned that there is still significant growth potential left in the internet ad market.
“We could absolutely see it grow to being a 30% medium [of share of ad spend], to go past £4bn to even £5bn annually,” he said. “Online display advertising has plenty of room for growth.”
Despite the seemingly inexorable rise of internet ad spend, a closer examination of the IAB’s figures show that the recession has had an impact. In the first quarter £920m was spent on online advertising, representing 8.6% year-on-year growth. However, in the second quarter, spend fell almost £100m to £832m, representing only a 1.1% increase on the amount spent in the same period last year.
Adam Smith, futures director at WPP’s combined media operation Group M, argued that the internet’s share of total UK ad spend could be close to its peak.
Smith cited factors such as the increasing share of time that users spend on social networking websites, which have not attracted huge advertising spend, and the increasing saturation of internet penetration in the UK as potential limiting factors. “This day was bound to arrive, as the internet has been attracting a huge long tail of advertisers that have not advertised before doing completely new things,” he said. “It is a memorable event. However, it is a bit simplistic to make this comparison [and] it is always possible that internet’s share [of total UK ad spend] could go backwards if TV has a good year.”
The UK is not the first country where internet ad spend has overtaken TV spend, Denmark reached the milestone about six months ago. But it is the first major economy to do so
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Posted by jameswdcrawford on August 17, 2009 under Journalism |
Rumours (see link: http://tinyurl.com/m9dkq9) which are circulating about the potential sale of The Observer got me thinking… What would stop the GMG from launching ‘The Guardian on Sunday’ or another competing publication?
I used to read the Observer purely because it was near-as-damn-it the “Sunday” version of the Guardian, but I had no loyalty to the Observer brand. Recently I think it went down hill and became too “eco” and too “ethical” and pandered towards middle class lefties in affluent suburbs of London, rather than its core liberal target audience. Don’t get me wrong I love the left, the environment and ethical thinking, but there was too much ‘bourgeois’ leftist thinking in the paper for my liking.
Whoever buys the paper will take a long hard look at its content no doubt, but I feel the biggest challenge would be to fend off GMG or A N Other publisher from launching a challenger title. I am sure any potential new owners would have this risk covered while undertaking due diligence. But where there is a will there is a way, and contracts are not always worth the paper they are written on.
Coupled to this risk is the fact that I personally would rather read a Guardian on Sunday as opposed to The Observer, and I don’t think I am alone, so here is another problem perhaps?
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© James Crawford’s PR and Media Blog. 2009
Hi. I am James Crawford, a PR man. Media relations is my specialism, but public relations is changing and the internet is at the heart of it.
I'm a Manchester dweller and lover of the media. I have too much music, support Manchester United and adore all things French.
I currently work for a Citypress, Manchester's biggest and best PR consultancy, but all the thoughts on here are my own and nothing to do with my employers.
