Gary Andrews

Damn those French. Lolly clearly knows I can’t resist the opportunity to make a playlist, so tagged me in a Valentine’s Day playlist meme using the We7 site.

Now, let’s get one thing clear from the start here. I’m not a particularly big fan of Valentine’s Day. Usually I try and ignore it or, failing that, despise it. If I’m feeling particularly perky, I’ll head out and play singleton’s bingo.

The rules are thus. Go to a godawful nightclub that will have no shortage of desperate single people. Take a friend. Get a drink and a good vantage point. Survey the romantic apocalypse about to be unleashed below and match up exactly which people will end up with the most inappropriate partners by the end of the night.

It’s quite fun, largely because you realise that no matter how lonely, and probably pointless, your existence is on this particular day, at least you’re not one of those below, desperately trying to cop off with somebody, anybody, in an effort to validate your own attractiveness for the night.

Really, it’ll be easier for all concerned if they just locked all single people in separate rooms with some porn and a box of kleenex for the night on February 14th. At least you wouldn’t have to spend as much to achieve the sense of shame and inadequacy going out on Valentine’s is guaranteed to bring.

So, having established my feelings towards this coming Saturday, the choice of tracks for my playlist are perhaps somewhat unsurprising.

Here’s the playlist.

And because I am, essentially, a walking High Fidelity cliche, here’s a running commentary with the tracklisting.

1. Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau - Aled Jones

I started off in a surprisingly positive frame of mind. Casting for a link to start the playlist was obvious: Wales play England in the Six Nations on Valentine’s Day and hopefully we’ll give Martin Johnson’s men a damn good hiding. The Welsh national anthem, then, was a given. However, they didn’t have any proper versions, just a piss poor attempt by Aled Jones. This somewhat sets the tone for the rest of the playlist – something you love utterly bastardised.

2. International Velvet – Catatonia

I’m still on the loving Wales theme at this stage. Every day when I wake up, I thank the lord I’m Welsh. Very self-absorbed. Very Valentine’s Day.

3. Hermann Loves Pauline – Super Furry Animals

So, now we’re still with the Welsh, but crossing into a genuine love story here – the love story of Einstein’s parents. Includes lines about Marie Curie dying from radiation. Perfect wooing material.

4. You’re The One For Me Fatty – Morrissey

As if I need an excuse to put Morrissey in this playlist. Still with the slightly dubious kind of life.

5. Your Mother’s Got a Penis – Goldie Lookin’ Chain

And with this we move from the dubious to the very wrong kind of love. And we’re back with the Welsh as well.

6. Ladies of the World – Flight of the Conchords

Continuing the transsexual theme here, this moves beyond Wales and takes the love out to the whole world. It doesn’t matter what type of woman you are, Brett and Jermaine just want to give you loving. Us men aren’t fussy like that.

7. When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You – Marvin Gaye

At this stage I was torn between going into a genuine love playlist with Let’s Get It On, or go for a more miserable angle with the above track. A no brainer in the end – this is probably the most bitter, yet seductive, break-up song ever written.

8. Caught Out There – Kelis

Where bitterness gives way to pure anger. Nobody wins.

9. There’s a Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis – Kirsty MacColl

I wanted to put England 2 Columbia 0 in here but We7 didn’t have it and it wasn’t on my computer either, so I’ll have to settle for “he’s a liar and I’m not sure about you.” The next track would have been Ian Dury, but they didn’t have any of that either.

10. Babies – Pulp

A lovely little tale about sleeping with a girl’s sister, only to discover you fancy the other one all along. Deceit moves into just plain male uselessness.

11. Where The Wild Roses Grow – Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue

And all that pent out anger has to come out somewhere. Namely murder. Obviously, by this stage, Nick Cave had to feature somewhere and this was the lazy, yet appropriate, choice.

12. Valentine – Richard Hawley

I mellowed by this stage and put a genuinely nice track in. Other than the fact that Richard doesn’t need any Valentine or roses, but a cuddle. Which suits me just fine. See, Richard Hawley’s music can turn even an hardened cynic a little bit slushy.

13. Vincent – Don Maclean

All good things must come to an end, and what better way to finish this play list than with this tragic tale from Don? Reminds me somewhat of Romeo and Juliet, and I know plenty of people who’ve told me that play is the best love story ever written. I never like to point out at that stage that exactly how it ends.

If you missed the earlier link to this playlist, it’s here.

Right, let’s tag a few people. Chris, Matthew, Geordie, Jaz, Chris N and Kerry can do their worst.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: playlists, Valentine's Day, We7

“Mate,” said my colleague Ben, when I told him about being invited back to the old student paper I edited to do a talk on the future of journalism and how to get into in. “You know you’ve made it when your old university invites you back.”

“Chances are everybody else was busy,” said I. “And I’m cheap.”

It was an unexpectedly enjoyable surprise to find myself back at Cardiff University Students’ Union on a Saturday afternoon to speak to the section editors and writers of gair rhydd. It was also interesting from my own point of view, as I learned a few bits and pieces as well.

Before my waffle talk, Will Dean (The Guardian) and Greg Cochrane (ex-NME, now Radio 1), both ex-gair rhydd members, did their bit as well. What was telling was the amount of times words relating to the internet were thrown around. Podcasting was a common one. Blogging was another.

It shows how quickly the industry is moving these days. When I was editor, blogging was still very niche [1]. Podcasting hadn’t even entered our lexicon. Now Greg and Will are using these terms casually, as part of everyday work. None of us are journalists who’d been told this stuff was vital to our industry when we were learning the ropes.

You want proof of how the web has and will continue to shape journalism. You’ve just read it.

Interesting (and surprising) bit number two: When I asked how many people in the room were blogging, I had a couple of tentative hands. When I asked if any were on Twitter, no hands went up [2]. A few other social media sites elicited no response. On reflection, I think, I should have asked how may people had heard of these sites.

This surprised me somewhat, as I’d assumed (dangerous, I know) that many more journalism hopefuls were blogging in this day and age (when I did my BJTC course, I was the only blogger). I guess, when you spend so much of every day working in this area, you forget not everybody’s quite such of a web geek as yourself.

By the time I’d finally shut up, they’d seen Phillip Schofield explain what Twitter is and had their picture posted up on my Twitter stream.

They also had your crowdsourced advice (thanks to everyone who responded) and probably had it drummed into them that they needed to be online in some form, as well as learning as many different skills as possible, to increase their chances of employment in what is currently a very depressed industry, jobs-wise.

But it was also refreshing that, in the informal chat that followed, there was a lack of cynicism over blogging, Twitter, video sites like Qik and Seesmic, and other such places. Compare this with those currently employed in the industry. It can be tough to convince media people of the worth of these tools (its a common sigh I get from just about everybody I know who works with more web-based tools).

Granted, that attitude is changing, helped, in part, by more colleagues slowly trying (and, in many cases, getting addicted) these sites and reporting back on their worth. If you want a great example of a mainstream journalist utilising social media, look no further than Dan Wootton from the News of the World.

But for every Dan, or Ben in PR, there’s about half a dozen unconvinced hacks or press officers who either don’t have the time, the inclination or the web knowledge to leap in.

And that’s one of the joys about chatting to student journalists. They’re willing to listen; they’re willing to try new things. Ok, they may not get on with Twitter. They may decide that blogging isn’t for them. It’s the same for everybody. But they’re less likely to dismiss these communication tools, which, for me, is encouraging.

I had several queries about setting up blogs – the software to use, how to pick up readers, etc – and a few about assorted sites like Twitter. I had a long chat with the current editor about making their website more Web 2.0 friendly. And, hopefully, we’ll see a few of them blogging and Twittering in the coming weeks.

Here’s a quick list of those I spoke to yesterday who’ve already joined Twitter:

Ben Bryant (gair rhydd editor): @benbryant

Emma (Comment & Opinion editor): @emcetera

Tom Victor (Sorry Tom, I didn’t catch your section): @tomvictor

Feel free to stop by and say hi to them.

[1] Ok, you could argue it still is, in many respects. But back then few newspapers were leaping aboard the blogging bandwagon. It felt much like where Twitter was last year.

[2] I think this may have been out of shyness on a couple of parts. It’s taken me this long to accept I’m an utter geek (or nerdlinger, which Katie Lee uses often and I think fits nicely). I didn’t like to admit it that far back.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: blogging, future of journalism, gair rhydd, student journalists, students, Twitter

Bobbie Johnson from the Guardian has had it with social media. It’s easy to sympathise.

“Listen. I have blog. I use Twitter. I idly flick through lists of people I’d forgotten I ever knew on Facebook. I’ve even got a MySpace page, although I don’t like to talk about it. They are great ways of connecting people, and they’re very exciting when you start using them, because they allow virtual contact in ways that are analogous to – if not the same as – real life. You know, communicate with people. That old thing.

…

Nobody talks about people down the pub laughing about Bale’s expletive-laden bullying as a “social drinking sensation”. They don’t call people giggling about it on the phone as a “social telecommunications sensation”. They call it joking, or they call it gossip, because that’s what people do. Whether they do it online or offline, down the pub or on Facebook doesn’t matter. “Social media” is mainstream – we don’t need to claim any more victories for it.”

Quite so. I’m at a point where I roughly agree with Bobbie as well. I’ve probably spent as much time as anybody hyping up ‘social’ media tools. It was a convenient term, much like ‘new media’ was back in the emerging days of the internet.

It has now crossed into the mainstream. That, I think, we can safely say. But, as Bobbie points out, having Christian Bale’ s rant pinged around Twitter doesn’t act as proof that it’s taking over the world (such proof, for what it’s worth, is pretty easy to accumulate elsewhere).

Wadds wrote last week about the change that was coming in Twitter and other forms of social media (I’m still using the term as it’s convenient) and I think we’re seeing it now.

Now, unless I’ve completely misread his column, I don’t think Bobbie’s calling for the death of social media; rather that he wishes social media people would stop banging on about how great social media is on social media sites.

Christ, I feel incestuous just writing that last sentence.

There reaches a point where, in any technology or movement or whatever you want to call social media, where it edges onto the mainstream and suddenly everybody is an expert on it.

And, as ever, with any kind of new, erm, thing (sorry, I’m casting about for words here and can’t find the right one) there is a lot of bullshit. And a lot of people who get involved for little discernible purposes other than to self-promote their usually overhyped wares.

We’re probably at this stage now.

Now, this isn’t a post where I run screaming at Twitter yelling “YOU’VE CHANGED AND I DON’T LIKE IT” on my part either. But the site – and many other bits have become a mite trying at times. Largely because of the jargon and the self-promotion and the self-satisfaction and God alone knows what. [Insert your own examples here. I'm tired, ok].

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Social media is still important. It is, and will continue to, make an impact on our lives – how we view, consume and engage with both the media and the world in general.

But the likes of Twitter et al are also communication tools. And just as we all use our mobile phones to communicate in different ways, the same could be said for these assorted sites. They are a way of communication. No more, no less. How you choose to use them is up to you.

So, with that in mind, it’s not a surprise that PR (and journalism and the like) is naturally drawn to Twitter. After all, PR is a communications industry.

And, just with any new development, there will always be people in an industry who cotton onto it quicker than others. I guess you could call these people experts.

Whatever title you give them, these will be the people leading the way in training, enthusing and helping their colleagues or industry get the best out of the new technologies.

What’s quite interesting is some of the best people I know in this area have gone quite quiet over various social media outlets (God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I can’t stop writing the term. I’ll stop it soon, I promise). And that’s probably as good an indication as any that social media’s moved into the mainstream.

It means that they no longer need to shout from the rooftops and are probably getting stuck into work and training and other such things. They’ve not moved on, they’ve just got more on their plates as every area tries to get a piece of the action. And this is a good thing, probably.

No doubt there will now be a slew of blog posts in the coming months claiming social media is dead (we’ve already had this with blogging). It’s not. It’s evolving.

Those who start proclaiming the death of social media are probably either trying to get attention or acting like the cool kid at school who spends ages raving about a band only to disown said band when everybody else realised how good they are. This isn’t the same as fatigue or frustration, which is what Bobbie appears to have.

I still love many aspects of social media. It’s integral to a lot of what I do. Twitter is increasingly useful for work, del.icio.us is a daily essential, I’m using wikis a hell of a lot more and I’ve only just realised how useful Tumblr can be.

But this does not mean I need to run around letting the whole world know I’ve just created a new wiki (although I’m as guilty as anybody of pimping my blog over the assorted networks).

This probably comes across as quite a jumbled post, but I think that’s a reflection of where things are at currently.

Social media tools are being absorbed into the mainstream but the principles guiding them are not new. Gossip is gossip, news is news, no matter how it becomes so. And talking about these wonderful new tools is easy. Doing something with them is considerably harder.

Twitter – and other sites you can lump under the SM umbrella – is useful, fun and interesting. Going around declaring yourself an expert in this probably isn’t. I removed the phrase social media enthusiast from my profile a week or so ago because I realised it made me sound like an utter wanker. And, frankly, I don’t need any extra help in that department.

I’ll finish by lifting Kat Hannaford’s comment from Bobbie’s piece, because it’s delightfully ranty, and pretty much spot on. And she’s one of my favourite, funniest Tweeters:

“Twitter and all the assorted other social networking brainfuckery has sapped the joy right out of the internet in recent months, and it’s taking all my willpower not to tell people to sod off, stop embarrassing themselves, and crawl back to the nook at Shoreditch House that they crawled out of.

Now if you excuse me, I’m going to go look at pictures of cats to reinstall a glimmer of hope within me about the benefits of the internet.”

Amen to that. Pictures of cats will still be popular no matter what stage of the web we’re in

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Bobbie Johnson, hyperbole, social media, Twitter

He’ll also stop talking about himself in the third person now.

Over at Soccerlens I wax lyrical about the 10 greatest ever drawn FA Cup ties and the subsequent replays.

The words “You’re a bit of a sad geek, aren’t you” may be used in conjunction with this article. You’d probably be right.

I’ve also managed to irritate Manchester United fans. Makes a change from having Manchester City fans chasing after me with pitchforks. I’ve actually got nothing much against either club. They both do things well and not so well. And things are never dull with either of them…

I have got other stuff I’d like to write on here, but I’ve not had the time as I’m insanely busy. And I don’t commission myself to write a weekly piece. If I did, I’d have sacked myself by now.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: busy, FA Cup, Manchester United, Soccerlens

Soccerlens: Droylsden v Chesterfield may well be the strangest cup tie of 2008.

(And, yes, I know there’s a spelling mistake in the first paragraph. I had a bout of insomnia on Sunday night and only got a few hours kip, so that was written, and then left for two hours before being proofed by a very very tired Gary. This is why subs are just as important on the web, people).

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Chesterfield, Dave Pace, Droylsden, FA Cup, Soccerlens, sub-editors

Kerry’s listed her five hopes and dreams for a digital world in 2009, and has tagged me to do the same, so here’s (roughly) what I’d quite like to see or do next year.

1. That more people and companies start getting involved in social media and don’t just dismiss it as “something for the internet – and we/I don’t need to get involved with that”. Ok, so you don’t need to have a Twitter account or whatever for every single project. And, yes, sometimes working offline is equally effective, if not more so. But don’t just dismiss this whole area out of hand.

2. This is quite a general one: to learn more about sites or services that I don’t currently use or understand. And then see how I can make them part of my working routine. I know I don’t currently get the best out of, say, Technorati. And I’ve only really touched briefly on Seesmic, Phreadz and moblogging. These I need to rectify.

3. This one’s pretty much the same as Chris’: To see more brands you wouldn’t expect to be so active online get more active. Sports clubs are a prime example. There’s a great audience out there waiting for something innovative.

4. To give this place a proper spruce up. Fond as I am of it, there’s nothing a bit of cosmetic surgery can’t solve.

5. To remember to switch off from social media from time to time. While keeping on top of the latest issues and trends is essential, I can take a night off. And those RSS feeds can wait. There’s a tendency with the immediacy of the web that it has to be done and it has to be done now. And sometimes it does. But sometimes, real life takes priority. And it never hurts to take a weekend away from all things web-related to recharge the batteries.

So, with that, I’m going to ask Ben, Becky, Chris, Joanna and Nosemonkey what they hope for the year ahead.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: 2009, New Year's Resolutions

Soccerlens: Mark Wright gets appointed as Chester manager for the third time. Chester fans aren’t best pleased.

I’ve also got about four posts I really want to write on here. But, my Lord, it’s been busy work-wise. I’ll find time soon. Hopefully. Possibly. Maybe.

“I’ve been working like a Japanese prisoner of war. Enjoy it Lynn, I’m being bawdy.“

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Alan Partridge, Chester City, Mark Wright, Soccerlens