Archive for April, 2008

In the spirit of using this blog as a repository for all sorts of random things I’ve written, look over here for a report on a row between Bermuda’s Government and largest paper, sparked by a Freedom of Information campaign.

Hurrah! Another journalism prize bagged. Poynter Online ran a competition looking for six-word journalism mottos, and after yet another Floridian voting scandal, one of mine was a runner-up. They’re all online here, and well worth a browse.
My entry, since you ask: “Curiosity: kills cats, pays our wages”

I mentioned City’s student newspaper - The Inquirer - in this post a few weeks back. Today an email from its editor landed on my doormat. I’ve reproduced it in full below (with permission).

Don’t want to add too much, as it speaks for itself about how tough starting a new student publication can be. All I really have to add are three thoughts:
1. A touch ironic that the institution that churns out more UK journalists than any other has banned circulation of its student paper, no?

2. The struggle for the paper’s finances again reminded me about the conservatism of journalism students. The setup which this blogs runs on could easily host an online student newspaper, with audio and video if wanted. It costs around £30 a year. The costs of printing at least 6 copies of a print paper (at a loss) are rather higher. Still, for now, it seems for students newsprint’s where it’s at.

3. As someone who worked on both established and new student publications, I can confirm that it’s not unusual for students to be out of pocket as a result of working on student papers. The time, money, and dedication taken to establish an institution’s first paper is pretty impressive.

Anyhow, I’ll hand you over now to Tom Walker:

Hey,

Noticed your little mention of the Inquirer, ‘cos the link sent a few referrals our way.

Just wanted to say, even saying that City has one student paper is being a bit generous. We started up the paper ourselves in late 2006 because there wasn’t one (ridiculous at such a supposedly great journalism school), and since then we’ve published the thing completely independently - we’re banned from giving it out inside the university, and any staff that help us out with stories find threats from the senior management landing on their desks. The paper is one that is published by City students, is about City, but has no real links to City as an institution at all.

We publish monthly (well, sort of - like you say, we’ve had to skip out the exam period because no-one’s got any time to do it then). Printing costs come out of our student loans, and getting ads to make that money back is a complete pain in the neck. The university does not fund, help or support us in any way… nobody is paid to run the paper or given any time out of their degree to do it, and the thing made a loss this year.

I write this not because I’m insulted or anything, but just because I don’t think people generally appreciate how precarious our one student paper’s situation is!

Yours, someone who went to a bog-standard comp and didn’t even manage to get into the University of London, never mind Oxford,

Tom Walker
Editor, the Inquirer
(and undergrad journalism student, and general City rabble-rouser)

The debate around Adrian Monck’s forthcoming book, Can You Trust the Media? (hence: CYTTM. I’m not typing that out every time) is starting to get going, ahead of the launch event this Wednesday. Stephen Pritchard (The Observer’s Readers Editor) is not a fan. Charlie Beckett, of POLIS, is more positive. Time for me to pitch in, methinks.
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Things I could never see happening in the UK: the Washington Post and New York Times swap scoops each evening. That said, most of our front pages are out on Newsnight etc by 11pm. Who needs secret deals?

Thanks to the new facebook lexicon, now we know:

Blue line is Obama, yellow line’s Clinton, green is McCain

Obama most popular among the young folk of facebook - shock horror. More interesting to see when he shot ahead, and how much it’s closed up.

More interesting to see just how much everyone’s stopped caring -not a good sign for those on the democratic side claiming a long race is helping keep people’s attention democrat.

Anyway, nice new tool from facebook there. Less sure about chat - do we have to do everything through facebook, man? There are other sites out there, guys.

I normally hate these “answer this and tag five more people” things, but I rather liked this one, so here goes:

The Task:

WHAT ARE YOU READING?

The rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people

My response:

Fifth sentence: Modern capitalism made the idea of trusting people with whom you had “no prior personal ties” seem reasonable, if only by demonstrating that strangers would not, as a matter of course, betray you.

Next three: This helped trust become woven into the basic fabric of everyday business. Buying and selling no longer required a personal connection. It could be driven instead by the benefits of mutual exchange.

The book: “The Wisdom of Crowds”, by James Surowieki

The verdict (for those interested): worth a look, but take with a significant pinch of salt

I’m not going to tag five people. There are some depths to which man should not sink.

Headlines I never thought I’d read #47: “Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital”. Gosh.

Adrian Monck generously shared a PDF copy of his forthcoming book - “Can You Trust The Media?” with me, obviously in the hope that I’d direct some of my many thousands of unique blog visitors* towards purchase. I’ll be posting my thoughts, for what they’re worth, in the next few days.

For now, though, Monck’s book reminded me (i.e. directly referenced) an idea on information from Hal Varian - who, incidentally, is the author of the textbook which saved my bacon when learning information economics.

The idea is based on Malthus. The amount of information presented through media outlets grows exponentially, but the time available to consume it grows (at best) linearly. As such, more and more information is produced but not consumed.

To quote:

“The supply of information (in virtually every medium) grows exponentially whereas the amount that is consumed grows at best linearly. This is ultimately due to the fact that our mental powers and time available to process information is constrained.

This has the uncomfortable consequence that the fraction of the information produced that is actually consumed is asymptoting towards zero.”

The theory is that as more news is produced, especially rolling TV and internet news services vastly expanding quantity of output, fewer people follow each particular outlet, and less content is actually seen. When news is competing with other forms of media too, the effect is compounded. There are only so many hours in the day, after all.

Of course, the classic malthusian catastrophe - that exponential population group coupled with linear growth in agriculture would lead to eventual starvation for all - turned out to be (thus far) a fallacy. The Malthus model underestimated productivity increases in farming, which have greatly increased crop yields over given areas. Population growth also didn’t continue quite as modelled - birth rates fall in developed countries. Agriculture growth is more-than-linear, population not-quite-exponential.

Is this the case for information too? To a certain extent, almost certainly.

Look back 30 years. The time available to watch television (for example) would be rather limited - evenings, when the family is gathered round. Radio, books and newspaper were less constricted in terms of time, but in terms of efficiency of gathering media, not great.

New technology is allowing media to be accessed more quickly: RSS readers allow users to pull in content from a variety of sources extremely quickly and efficiently. Mobile internet and video increase the time available to consume multimedia content.

Many users now multi-task media consumption: as I write this blog post, I have new RSS posts appearing in the bottom left of my screen, and the Today programme playing through the radio.

Software such as iPlayer and 4od - plus Sky+ - allow output to be watched at a variety of times, giving users more flexibility and access to media than ever before.

Enough waffle: the profileration of media is coupled with a variety of tools (and a change in usage patterns) to make consumption easier and more efficient. Talking about constraints of time as fixed and immutable is an over-simplification. The malthusian situation is a worst-case scenario, which in any case would not necessarily make the case for the influence of any given media source diminishing in influence.

Of course, it doesn’t quite sweep the problem away - media does seem to be fragmenting, and news channels seem to have pretty small audiences, relatively speaking. But Varian’s theory, elegant though it is, is unlikely to be the sole, or even primary, driving force behind it.

That said, he’s still an ace economist…

*Note well: The truth of this statement depends on how one defines “many”. And note the absence of time frame in the statement.

What persuaded the House of Commons Commission to appeal the Information Tribunal’s order to release details of expenses claimed by MPs on second homes?

Just a week before the decision, the commission said it had “no further legal steps” to prevent the release of receipts and address details for 14 MPs after a ruling from the Information Tribunal. But just one day before the deadline for handing the information over, the committee received new legal advice and lodged an appeal at the High Court. The appeal is expected to cost the taxpayer over £100,000.

The commission’s concern is that releasing such information could “inhibit democratic debate” as MPs would be fearful to speak their minds if their addresses were known. Obviously unrelated to the decision to appeal would be any embarrassment over the amount of expenses claimed by the committee’s six members. MPs have speculated that were details of the 14 MPs expenses to be revealed, they would lobby in the interests of fairness for similar details to be released for all their Parliamentary colleagues.

All but one of the commission’s six members claim Additional Costs Allowance (ACA), which covers interest payments on second mortgages. The remaining member, Harriet Harman, is ineligible to claim as her constituency is in central London. Labour’s Stuart Bell and Liberal Democrat MP Nick Harvey, both commission members, have both claimed within £20 of the maximum allowed - £22,110 in 2006/7 – every year since 2004. Conservative member David MacLean jointly topped the list of ACA claimants for two of the last five years. MacLean was behind attempts last year to excluse the Commons from the Freedom of Information Act entirely.

Michael Martin claimed a more modest £17,346 on ACA in 2006/7 – but then does enjoy the use of a grace-and-favour apartment which received over £700,000 worth of renovations during his tenure as speaker. He has also had expenses headaches of his own after his official spokesman stepped down over misleading reporters about the taxi bills of Martin’s wife. The committee claimed a total of £736,635 in 2006/7.

The appeal goes to the High Court on May 7th. The commission are sure to follow proceedings closely – in the interests of democratic debate, of course.

Addendum: The same six commission members make up the committee overseeing the rehaul of MPs’ expenses.