Gary Andrews

In newspapers, Rupert Murdoch still very much matters. In the internet, his influence may not be as keenly felt, but when he speaks, people still listen, especially when what he says hints at blocking search engines from his news sites.

How likely is this to happen, and is this a Murdoch misstep or will he surprise us yet again?

It’s worth just quickly starting with paid:content’s report. Murdoch didn’t exactly say that his publications would block search engines, as he seems to be unsure of how his own publication, the Wall Street Journal, currently handles search.

The consensus on Twitter seems to be that Murdoch would be shooting himself in the foot by withdrawing from Google and Google News. As Charles Arthur notes, Google are unlikely to be troubled by this.

More than that, if Techcrunch are to be believed the WSJ gets around twenty-five per cent of its traffic from Google and Google News.

Even if this is some plan to get more people buying into the content he’s locked down behind a paywall, it still doesn’t totally make sense. People still have to find the content somehow (although I suspect The Times, Sun, WSJ et al would only need a fraction of their current users to pay in order to make a decent amount of cash).

Is this a case of a big beast of the old media not really getting the internet? Some would point to MySpace as another example, but I’m not so sure. At the time it was probably a decent buy (not any more, though) and it’s not like Murdoch is the only person from traditional media to make a less-than-stellar purchase of a popular online company. Hell, enough online companies make the same mistake.

Murdoch clearly thinks he’s onto something and it would be more beneficial to him to be out of Google’s directories than in it. Personally, I think he’s mad in this regard – SEO is hugely important for newspapers -but there’s always the nagging sense that he might be working on a masterplan that will have us all in awe.

And it’s also worth remembering that if he somehow convinces a new Conservative government to break up the BBC’s online news offering (not beyond the realms of possibility) then suddenly Murdoch will be in a lot stronger position. Albeit still without SEO or Google ranking.

My own feeling is that Murdoch thinks he can take on Google in a straight fight, much as he took on the UK newspaper market and won. But he may not have realised that the game has changed slightly.

Google isn’t in competition with Murdoch’s empire – at least not directly, and not where journalism is concerned. Google also probably won’t be too fussed if Murdoch’s publications remove themselves from the directory. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of other news sites out there.

Murdoch strikes me as one of those from the old school who seems Google and others as being parasitic. But the trouble with parasites is that unless you find a way to manage them, they will eventually kill their host Murdoch would do well to keep this in mind.

written by Gary \\ tags: Google, Google News, Rupert Murdoch, Wall Street Journal

Ok, this one’s for the football bloggers amongst you.

A couple of months ago a group of us held the first ever (probably) football bloggers meetup: Socrates.

Basically, it was a chance for football writers to get together, watch a match, have some nibbles and generally mingle. And what a brilliant night it was.

Now the second Socrates is arriving faster than Dennis Rommedahl down a blind alley.

This Socrates will be on Wednesday 9th December at Mint’s ‘Open Sauce’ in-house bar in Vauxhall. Beer, food, footy and great company. What more could you want?

written by Gary \\ tags: football blogger meetup, football bloggers, Socrates

Funny, really, how many individuals’ blogs in my RSS reader are having more posts saying: “Sorry, been a bit busy, here’s what I’ve been up to.”

Funnily enough I was thinking of posting something similar myself. But it also got me thinking.

Part of this also stemmed from a colleague asking for a list of bloggers for area x earlier today. My list was a bit small. “That’s great,” came the response, “but, er, is that it.”

I checked. Yes, that was indeed it. And, what’s more, it was probably a bit smaller than the last area x blogger list I sent over.

Which neatly melds these two lines of thought together. This isn’t a sign that the blogosphere (sorry) is getting smaller, nor are people stopping blogging. But they are consolidating.

Plenty of people still have personal blogs, but it’s kind of inevitable that blog activity tails off at some point. It takes a lot of time to run and maintain a blog, especially if it’s just you running it.

You know those blogging advice guides that tell you to blog every day. Great, but you try blogging every day on your own blog, plus having a job, plus having a social life, plus having a relationship, plus writing for all those other blogs you promised people to. Why, you’d almost think blogging was a full-time job.

It’s one of the reasons I’m quite a fan of Posterous.

It’s somewhat inevitable that, if you’re any good, you’ll either try and flex your muscles and write for blogs for bigger audiences, or group blogs that carry more prestige. After all, it helps you get more writing and blogging work, and so on.

So, I can either say: “Oh yes, I blog at Gary Andrews.net,” and people may expect a wonderfully daily updated site. Or I can say: “I write for Soccerlens, twofootedtackle.com, and Pitch Invasion. And I have my own blog.” Kind of sounds more impressive really.

If you’re really good, others will pick up on your work and you might even get a mainstream publication or two pick you up for occasional pieces. Plus you flit between half a dozen different blogs. Before you know it your personal blog is looking a little forlorn or serves merely as a place to dump everything you’re working on.

It’s not like it’s a surprise that blogging, and websites, and group blogs ape more traditional publications really. There’s only a small percentage of bloggers who have the time to consistently post, and these tend to be the ones who set up blog networks.

But this brings us to another point to briefly touch on – online PR. If blogs are consolidating, and bloggers are moving between online and offline publications, where does this leave your online PR specialist?

In times past, your non-online PR (no, I have no idea what the best name to label these as is) would take care of the press, the magazines, the TV, the radio and your online PR would beaver away looking for bloggers or cool websites.

But now your blogger is writing for the newspaper, and blogging as well, and that reporter you’ve got labelled as a star contact is spending more time updating his blog for the newspaper, while another journalist has set up an online magazine, yet the hot young blogger has launched his new news and opinion site for the same topic and, now you come to look at them, they look remarkably similar in terms of content. And they’re all on Twitter.

I’ll be shocked if online PR is still considered a separate discipline in five years. And I think I’m being generous in timescale here.

Yet you’ll still find people who insist online PR is a separate discipline; an area that only online specialists can deliver results. Yet, increasingly, your online and not-online PRs are pitching the same spaces and, if they’re doing it well, it’ll be in exactly the same way.

I’ve said many a time before, it’s not a mystery on how to pitch blogs. To that, you can add, there’s no point drawing up a long list of blogs and websites to get coverage on if you’re not going to see the benefits or the ROI.

You wouldn’t invite the Glossop Advertiser to a national policy briefing that has little relevance to Glossop, solely on the basis that it’s the same medium as the Guardian. Similarly, why would you want to pitch a blogger on a topic that has little relevance to them, other than the fact that, like Blog Y, they’re also based on the internet. Great, it’s been covered by 20 bloggers. But that’s not much use if it’s only relevant to the audience of 2 out of the 20.

There’s nothing mysterious about contacting bloggers, and there’s no shame in going for the biggest blogs in that area if they’re the most relevant. But it’s also worth remembering not to forget the smaller individual bloggers writing in the same area. After all, they’ll probably be editing the bigger blogs in a year’s time.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging, consolidation, online PR

And I have been for a bit, just busy. And about to enter what I’m terming The Epic Month of Business.

So, in case I disappear for days on end, here’s a couple of things you may have missed while I was away.

1. A small piece from me at Reputation Online about the general nature of my work and why it’s important to change things.

2. A truly bizarre story of two American girls who decided to hop across the Atlantic to watch Oldham Athletic. Away. At Millwall. I had a chat with them. Hopefully, they’ll be on the podcast next month, which should be entertaining!

Back to hermiting

written by Gary

Outta the country for a while. Ultra-strong comment moderation is on. Soz

written by Gary \\ tags: holiday

Everyone’s favourite microblogging site has continued its evolution this week, as Twitter moved subtly into a mass grassroots campaigning tool. Move over breaking news, you were so Spring 2009, organic protest is where it’s at now.

First up was the Trafigura case, of which so much has been written, it’s somewhat pointless to rehash completely what went on (Adam Tinworth has a nice, concise summary). In a nutshell, the Guardian were gagged on writing about reporting on a Parliamentary question concerning Trafigura and there actions surrounding the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast.

Once the Guardian wrote that they’d been gagged, Twitter (and plenty of blogs) quickly ensured it was one of the most discussed and written about topics online. The Streisand effect, if you will.

Much has been said about how Twitter brought about the downfall of Carter-Ruck’s gagging order. For what it’s worth, I suspect it would have been lifted eventually – you simply can’t stop papers reporting on the democratic business of Parliament just because it damages your client’s reputation. That would abolish hundreds of years of precedent. There’s a fair bit of that around.

For me, that’s the most important aspect, more so, even, than Twitter’s role in all this. The very fact a law firm thought it could ride roughshod over a basic right that’s essential to any functioning democracy is somewhat concerning. It would have set a very dangerous precedent, and it’s good to see, for ones, MPs from all parties standing up pretty strongly against this. This would have been a step too far.

What Twitter definitely did was to accelerate the process. Carter-Ruck may not have backed down so quickly were it not for Twitter, and it’s unlikely that it would have spread onto more news outlets, and the original root of the litigation wouldn’t have been dug up. In all honesty, can anybody recall Trafigura’s name before this?

As Adam says, it was crowdsourced journalism at its finest.

The second was Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir’s rather sickening piece on the death of Stephen Gately (no, I’m not going to link to it), which again hit the trending topics as Twitter users flocked to express their disgust. Again, this became, and maintained its place, as a trending topic on Twitter throughout the day.

This was somewhat different from the Trafigura campaign in some respects – it was more about decency than an affront to democracy. Nevertheless, the strength of feeling was enough to crash the Press Complaints Commission’s website and cause advertisers to ask to be removed from Moir’s article on the Mail’s site.

There has been a lot written about Stephen Gately’s death, some of it probably untrue, and some of it not overly pleasant. But it was this one article that ignited Twitter’s fury. It could have ben written by any writer in any national paper – the result would have probably been the same.

The Moir case really shows the power of Twitter. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at how many complaints the Mail gets each day. It’s incredibly rare for them to issue a statement around a complaint so quickly though (in an episode that contains just a touch of schadenfreude).

The difference, I think (and this is only hypotheticals), is that Carter-Ruck’s injunction would have been overturned sooner or later. This isn’t to say Twitter didn’t help, but it was a key player rather than an essential in getting it lifted. With Moir, the statement would never have been issued were it not for Twitter.

Moir also grasps the wrong end of the stick with her statement by describing it as “clearly a heavily-orchestrated online campaign”. Wrong. A heavily-orchestrated one implies a degree of organisation, whereas the reaction to her piece was spontaneous. It was the strength of feeling towards Moir’s article rather than a grassroots piece of action from, say, a gay rights group. It’s difficult to think something would trend so quickly and stay trending by organisation alone. It needs other Twitter users to keep talking about it long after it first moves towards trending.

And it’s also why I can’t see an organised campaign working as well as the Moir campaign. There’s only so far you can tap into the internet before it falls away, a victim of natural information turnover.

A quick note on the politics of Twitter as well. Somebody (I can’t remember who) noted that the two major Twitter campaigns were predominantly on liberal topics.

Is Twitter a liberal haven? I’m not so sure. To me it feels liberal, but that’s because of the people I follow. That doesn’t mean there’s not a large conservative following on there.

Secondly, it’s worth pointing out that Trafigura transcended political divides. Having heavyweight and idiologically different bloggers like Guido Fawkes and Chicken Yoghurt lending their support it somewhat like the suspension of cold war, in online terms. The only internet community recognised the chilling threat of the super-injunction for what it was: an affront to democracy. That does not necessarily make it liberal.

The Moir reaction leans towards a traditional cause of the left, or liberals, but you don’t have to belong to that part of the political spectrum to be appalled by her views on Stephen Gately. It, perhaps, shows how we as a society have become more liberal and tolerant, but it isn’t quite a cause championed entirely my liberals.

For me, Twitter comes across as more libertarian than liberal, and there is a crucial difference in this. It’s quick to stand up for freedom in all sense of the word, but also leans away from censorship. It certainly isn’t an area where one spectrum of politics dominates though.

written by Gary \\ tags: Carter-Ruck, Daily Mail, Jan Moir, libel, Stephen Gately, The Guardian, Trafigura, Twitter

Just a quick(ish) addition to the post I wrote at the start of the week about the Sunday Express’ “Jab as deadly as the cancer” article about the cervical cancer jab.

Ben Goldacre has covered the story in his Bad Science column, and it’s quite damning, especially his conversation with the expert, Dr Diane Harper. I’ll repost a paragraph from his article, which speaks for itself.

“…I contacted Professor Harper. For avoidance of doubt, so that there can be no question of me misrepresenting her views, unlike the Express, I will explain Professor Harper’s position on this issue in her own words. They are unambiguous.

“I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a ‘controversial drug’. I did not ‘hit out’ – I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview.”

Journalists are fallible. We do make mistakes. Occasionally we get the wrong end of the stick. But there’s getting something wrong that you haven’t understood properly and bending the facts to a state where they can do longer be called facts any longer.

It depressed me, it really does. In an industry that’s going through upheaval and can be subject to greater scrutiny than ever from anybody with a computer – and that has serious trust issues – articles like this just serve to undermine the public’s trust in journalists even further.

As was highlighted in the Royal Institution debate, the Express can produce good, accurate journalism. And it’s always worth asking questions on health issues.

But not like this. This isn’t good journalism. It barely even passes as a form of journalism. It’s irresponsible writing that has the potential to lead to women needlessly developing cervical cancer.

Did the Sunday Express really think this was an acceptable trade-off for a headline-selling front page?

Like I say, thoroughly depressing.

written by Gary \\ tags: bad journalism, Ben Goldacre, cervical cancer jab, misreporting. Dr Diane Harper