Having these companies potentially compete against Sky is a fascinating future, so, in a rare piece that might appeal to both football and technology fans, I’ve considered what could be quite a fragmented future for football broadcasting over at Pitch Invasion.

Exciting times. I’m now a published writer (of sorts).

A couple of years ago, due to some time off between switching jobs, I spent a week researching and writing a series of posts on fan ownership, activism and the successes and limitations for Pitch Invasion. I’m normally pretty critical of my work, and, as ever, there’s things I’d change, but it’s also some of the work I’m most proud of, given the amount of work I put into it. Oddly, I still get the occasional media enquiry to talk about fan ownership off the back of it.

A while back, Tom Dunmore, the editor of Pitch Invasion, contacted me to say he was putting together an ebook of the best of Pitch Invasion’s writing and would I be ok with including my work in it.

Naturally, I jumped at the chance.

That was some time ago, and I’d put it somewhat to the back of my mind until recently when the book became close to being finalised. Along the way it grew another head and Tom decided to produce a print version. I can’t wait to hold this in my hands.

So, yes, The Best Of Pitch Invasion is now out and available for Kindle, as an ebook or as a physical copy.

I’d urge you all to buy a copy – not really so much for my writing, but because there are a LOT of essays from some truly excellent writers. Pitch Invasion has always been a markedly different blog to many other soccer sites and there’s always a lot of thought, depth, knowledge and research in the pieces.

If you’re a regular reader of When Saturday Comes, World Soccer or even The Blizzard, it may well appeal (not that I think my writing can hold a candle to these publications).

So, yes, please buy a copy. You’ll be doing some in the knowledge that you’re supporting a genuinely independent publication, and will own a book that should at least make you think and look at football in a slightly different light.

Ingredients

1 medium onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 stems celery, chopped

Garam masala

1 can chopped tomatoes

1 can butterbeans

400ml vegetable stock

Parsley

Salt and pepper (to season)

Heat a small amount of sunflower oil in a large saucepan or deep bottomed frying pan, along with the garam masala. Throw in the onions, celery and garlic and fry for 4 mins or until slightly soft and coated in the spice. Add the butterbeans with their liquid, the vegetable stock and the chopped tomatoes.

Stir and turn down the heat to low. Add the parsley and season with salt and pepper to your taste. Leave simmering for 20-30 mins. Remove from heat and blend the mixture, in batches if necessary. Return to the heat, warm through and serve with some crusty bread.

I’m not hugely familiar or necessarily a massive fan of Alice Cooper’s music, but it struck me how unusual it is for a musician to have not just a self awareness of his hits but also a joy for still playing them. “I’m a music fan,” he said, “And when I go to a gig, I want to hear the classics too.”

Yes, no experimental jazz versions. No reluctant musician resenting wheeling out the songs they’re best known for. Listening to Cooper deconstruct School’s Out – “You only get one chance to create an anthem, and this was ours” – was fascinating.

The interview touched on a number of other topics, including his near-death experiences, his willingness to fight in Vietnam and the tongue-in-cheek humour in his performances and songs.

Given the outcry over Alice Cooper and the band’s performances at the height of their fame, there’s a delicious irony (that you sense he appreciates) that the once-demonised singer is witty, humble, intelligent and an all-round nice guy, and a Christian as well.

It’s a wonderful interview and a simple, brilliant piece of programming. BBC Four throws up some wonderfully fascinating programmes at times – and, rarely, one that actually makes me want to sit and write about it.

It’s available on the iPlayer until Monday, 28 November.

Joking as I may have been, with staff numbers down and pressure to produce rolling content on the up, there’s a lot more churnalism and reliance on syndicated agency content. Much as journalists would like to be out and about, exposing wrongdoing and reporting original content, modern demands make this kind of hard.

As such, there’s a lot of copy and pasting from other sources. If one paper, radio or other media source carries a story, others will take the main line and reproduce this, namechecking the original.

Actually, this isn’t a new thing. It’s sort of vital for the news industry to exist. One outlet will look slow if they’re not leading with the line obtained by their rivals, so often they’ll take the main points and rewrite into their own news story. It’s pretty common and generally accepted practice in the news industry. Whether it’s a practice you feel is proper journalism is another question (although it’s quite a skill to be able to rewrite agency copy well).

Where it isn’t accepted is in the blogging community, which is much more open to quoting, attributing and, most importantly, linking back to the original source. As somebody who’s been blogging in various guises since in 2003, this is nearly second nature to me and something I’ve carried into online journalism without any problem.

But when two very different worlds collide, there will be problems, and this was the case earlier this week. Gav Stone, who writes the specialist Les Rosbifs blog, focusing on the careers on English footballers abroad, pulled off something off a coup by securing an interview with former England, FC Twente and Wolsburg manager Steve McClaren about his time managing in Europe.

Let’s just emphasise this. A fully independent blogger who edits his site as a hobby and no typical mainstream access secured an interview with a reasonably recent England manager and who is still active in the game today. Unless it’s part of a PR event, these type of interviews are unusual on independent blogs and rarer still to be in such depth.

Understandably Gav was, to put it mildly, a bit miffed when a chunk of his interview turned up a few days later as a lifted and rewritten news story (“Macca: Twenty joy my career high) on Sky Sports, Team Talk and other sites that Sky had syndicated the story to.

After emailing and receiving no response, Gav called them out on Twitter. The response from the journalists on these sites was a mixture of defensive, patronising, a tad arrogant and one that showed very little understanding of the web.

Chief among Gavin’s complaints was the lack of a link back to the source of the story. Team Talk et al had credited the interview to Les Rosbifs (although with no explanation as to who or what the site was) and hadn’t linked back, and hadn’t asked permission to use the quotes in the first place. What started off as a slightly miffed request from a blogger has escalated into a stage where lawyers are being consulted.

To my mind, there are four different aspects to this: the moral and ethical and legal implications of Sky’s actions, the issue of proper crediting, the issue of hyperlinking, and the general attitude of a mainstream media publication towards an independent blog.

Morals, ethics, and legality

Legally, Sky were probably just about on the right side of the law (although my own copyright knowledge is somewhat hazy). The fair dealing exception, whereby content is used for comment or rewritten is very common in journalism, and largely expected among media organisations – getting a paper or news bulletin out would be nigh-on impossible without it.

It’s also worth pointing out Sky didn’t, technically, steal the interview. The articles – now removed (in itself curious given the robust defence of their methods offered by Team Talk members on Twitter) – did lift several lengthy quotes from Les Rosbifs. However, the news angle was changed, there are some (admittedly, not many) original words in the pieces and much of the context and depth provided by the original interview wouldn’t be apparent without reading the full original piece.

So, setting legal concerns to one side (and it would be interesting to see if any lawyers think Sky overstepped the mark and the piece was problematic legally, the moral and ethical concerns still come into play. And largely politeness too.

Had Sky approached Gavin for permission, it’s likely that the response and conversation would have been much more amicable. But that in itself causes problems. As Tom Phillips commented on my Google+ (subscribers only, sorry), permission is an odd thing. Many bloggers quote from the mainstream press liberally. Should they contact the journalist or publication every time they want to write their own article based around somebody else’s work. The idea seems somewhat absurd when turned around, even if it is good manners.

But it still somehow feels wrong, ethically. This isn’t a writer working in the cut and thrust of journalism, this is a blogger who has done this work in his spare time, and now sees somebody else profiting from the work he has done. The attitude of some of the journalists working for Sky was far from classy and left something to be desired. Gav wasn’t playing with the big boys, who was pursuing an interest.

One final point here. Gavin secured the interview with McClaren on the basis that he was not mainstream press. When McClaren’s quotes (perhaps to be expected, and perhaps a small touch of naivety on both McClaren and Gavin’s parts) found their way onto Sky, that hurts the relationship built up by Gavin.

Relationships between the media and many football figures are touchy at best. By trampling over Les Rosbifs’ interview, Sky have strained that relationship between McClaren, the press and bloggers just that little bit further.

In the credits

From Sky / Team Talk’s point of view, they’d credited Les Rosbifs. From their perspective, that was it. The credit, though, isn’t entirely clear who or what Les Rosbifs is. The credit simply reads “In an interview with Les Rosbifs…”.

Be honest here. Unless you were a football blogger or happened to know Gav personally, would you know what Les Rosbifs was? For all was made clear, it could have just as easily been a French cooking blog that happened to have interviewed McClaren about nutrition, and wider football issues.

Gav himself has said there’s been no real spike in traffic and other articles that have appeared on other sites haven’t even carried Les Rosbifs’ name. That credit may work fine for, say, The Mirror, but again, feels disingenuous in the context of Gavin’s site. Should you wish to find the whole interview, there’s no indication how to go about this (and remember, many readers are lazy).

But where the issue really becomes important is that of hyperlinking.

The links effect

The hyperlinking issue is where we can see clear effects, differences between Gav and Sky, and, on the part of Team Talk, a complete misunderstanding of how the internet works.

Mark Holmes, one of Team Talk’s journalists, first told Gav on Twitter that Team Talk knew how to credit properly, but then went onto express amazement as to why anybody would ever request a link to the source material in a post. This is somewhat staggering from an online journalist.

I’ve written in the past how hyperlinks are one of the most valuable pieces of currency on the internet. From the most basic point of view, it’s just good practice to link back to your sources – it provides an easy way for readers to find the original in one easy click, shows how much has been taken and is an open and transparent way of acknowledging original material.

Adding a link is quick, easy (and wouldn’t, unlike Mark Holmes claimed, add 10% more work to Team Talk’s day) and good practice, and helps deliver more traffic to the original site. Personally, I’d like to see all agency syndication include links to sources in their copy – and it’s up to the site to decide if they want to link or not.

But this is just a small part of the benefits of linking back to the source. Had a site like Sky or Team Talk, with a high trust ranking in Google, linked back to the original article, then this in itself would provide an excellent virtual form of payment to Gav and help boost the SEO for his site and especially the McClaren article.

By not linking to the source, this becomes more of an issue. Some time after publication, the Sky article ranked higher than the Les Rosbifs article in Google. Not only had Sky lifted a chunk of the interview, it was now benefitting in search terms. Even entering LEs Rosbifs into search saw Gav’s site rank lower.

Mark Chalcraft at 2nd Yellow has written about the implications of duplicated content for bloggers in terms of SEO and Google ranking. What, to a big site, may seem like an insignificant link actually has big implications helping deliver hits to smaller, independent blogs (I’m personally of the view that all sites should link to source material, unless there’s a compelling reason not to).

This is why, to me, the issue of crediting online shouldn’t just be a throwaway line about the origin. It should be clear, transparent and include links wherever possible. Not only does this benefit the reader, it benefits and rewards original material with minimum of effort.

But you’re just a blogger…

And this all comes back to the original attitude of several Sky journalists, who seemed amazed that the blogger they’d taken the content was rather persistent in asking for a link.

To say Gavin wasn’t being professional and should be more polite when asking for a link back to content they’d taken from his site in the first place is not just patronising, it’s incredibly arrogant. Without the legwork Gavin put in, there would be no story at all.

We’re frequently told the boundaries between blogging and journalism have broken down. This is true to an extent. When everybody from the BBC to ITV to the Guardian to the Telegraph blogs, you can safely say it’s a valid medium.

The boundaries between bloggers and journalists, though, have still, if this incident is anything to go by, most definitely not broken down. Gavin’s interview is a well researched and written piece of journalism, although he’s not a journalist. The rewrite is only tenuously journalism insofar as it’s published on a journalistic platform. Yet it is the latter who are seen as the gatekeeper still.

Team Talk and Sky will always get the bigger hits, but that’s not what this is about. Les Rosbifs is niche, and makes a virtue of this. The work is just as valid this way (and, if anything, more impressive given it is written outside of a day job). There is a hierarchy in terms of page views, yes, but not so much in status.

Should bloggers expect to be compensated when their work is lifted? Debatable. I’d say proper, fully-linked crediting isn’t a bad payment.

Should bloggers be asked to have their quotes used elsewhere? Again, possibly. These aren’t, strictly speaking, journalistic publications. There is no established culture of lifting and rewriting content, thankfully. There is more of a culture of openness, transparency and respect for source material and this is something journalists would be well advised to be mindful of when using independent blogs as a source.

Was it stealing? In my view, no. I have nothing against the practice per se, even if I don’t necessarily like how lifting is a commonplace tactic in the industry (copy and paste is, after all, hardly journalism). It’s a necessary evil, sadly.

But even though it isn’t stealing, in the legal sense of the word, it is, overall, poor form, and reflects badly on Sky and Team Talk, both for the initial perceived transgression and subsequent attitude towards the complaint. What could have been sorted quickly and easily escalated into something much more unpleasant. Social media crises have been created for brands out of less.

As with so much on the internet, it comes down to a judgement call. It is absurd to request permission from every single source, every single time (although there is absolutely no reason for not crediting and linking to them). But if the site is a small, independent blog like Les Rosbifs rather than one of your main competitors, it hurts nobody to use a bit of politeness.

Who knows, if they’d asked nicely, they may have even got an original piece of content from Gavin, based on the interview, which would have been a win-win situation for everybody (ok, maybe not necessarily with this particular content. But it’s an entirely plausible scenario).

If you’ve absolutely no idea what a QR code is, then you’re not alone. According to a recent survey by Simpson Carpenter, just 36% of British consumers know what QR codes are for, while  only 11% have actually used them. In addition, 52% didn’t have a device capable of scanning a code.

Nevertheless, there seems to be somewhat of an upsurge in usage of QR codes in Britain. (they’re already very big in Japan) Whether these are just being used as the new fashion or are genuinely useful is another matter.

I admit to being a little baffled and nonplussed by QR codes. The idea that you scan this clever 2D barcode, which takes you to a website, or invites you to send an email, displays text, etc seems to make sense, initially. Content that you wouldn’t be able to immediately access via your device. Fair enough.

The trouble is, the use of QR codes itself often makes little sense. I’ve yet to either be compelled to scan codes on a regular basis and, when I have, the content is a bit pointless or rather annoying.

There are plenty of bad or pointless examples of QR codes that have done the rounds. QR codes on adverts at underground stations that try to take you to an external site seem particularly useless given you can’t get a signal underground.

Equally annoying is the “social media agency” business card I was handed, complete with QR code, that, when scanned, took me on a long and painful journey through a badly designed website to get to the content they were encouraging you to check out.

Shout outs must also go to the feedback survey that didn’t work in Safari on the iPhone and the website that placed a QR code next to a hyperlink to the very same content the QR code took you to.

Chatting to my old friend and colleague, journalist Perri Lewis on Twitter, she advocated uses of the codes and suggested a few uses, such as instructions for furniture manuals (which I liked), strategically placed in magazines for extra content, and links to a portfolio on a CV (although Syd Lawrence did point out that chances are the reader of the CV is probably on a computer in the first place).

Another reasonable use of a QR code came from Barry Pilling on the Off The Wall Post podcast. Barry saw a QR code on a door by an art studio, scanned it and got taken to a site featuring the work.

And that seems to me to sum up what a QR code should do. Offer something that you can’t get easily at any given point in time and shouldn’t have to jump through extra hoops to find. They should be quick, easy and functional.

Unfortunately, many aren’t, and take the user on a frustrating journey that could have been done quicker by using a browser, even on a mobile phone.

There’s plenty of examples of doing QR codes for the sake of doing QR codes. And while it’s often hard to find a consistent, practical use for the codes, the really bad ones are hardly going to encourage an already sceptical or unaware public to adopt wholescale.

Sadly, thinking through how to use a QR code doesn’t stop some marketeers coming up with some hideously pointless ideas around a campaign. Take the following abomination from Betfair.

Yes, that is a QR code shaved into a player’s head. No, I have no idea how you’re meant to scan it (it didn’t seem to work when I paused the video and put my scanner up to the screen).

As an aside, I was at the Bromley game featuring the player with a QR code shaved into his head. It was utterly unnoticeable during the game, possibly because the player was in central midfield, somewhat contradicting Betfair’s comment of hoping to get spectators reaching for their smartphones.

Given that plenty of Bromley fans seemed to be unaware they were taking part in a social media first, I’m not entirely sure how successful you could call this (assuming fans actually knew what a QR code was and what they were meant to do with it).

So, to finish, a quick plea. There is nothing wrong with QR codes, per se, but there’s a lot wrong with their application. And spending time and money to shave a QR code into somebody’s head isn’t clever, it isn’t innovative and it isn’t cool. It’s just a waste of time and makes everybody involved look rather stupid.

All of which left me with some decisions to make. TFT has been where I’ve posted the majority of my somewhat infrequent football writing over the past couple of years, interspersed with guest posts elsewhere, and paid work. And since I started football blogging back in 2008 for Soccerlens, the industry and community has changed – both overtly and subtly.

There’s a few thoughts I’d like to consider around that, but my main thought is, with the football writing, it’s probably time to call it a day and largely leave it behind although, like Orson Welles in Transformers, I’m sure I’ll return will an occasional ill-judged foray in order to pay the bills. Or I have something equally ill-advised to say.

Back in 2008, football blogging was a very different community. There were a handful of well-known sites, with one eye on commerce, such as Soccerlens or Who Ate All The Pies, and some smaller or less well publicised blogs, often done by an individual out of love for the game.

The idea of a football blogging community was almost unheard of. Twitter existed but was still the preserve of early adopters. The idea that bloggers would contact each other, let alone converse with established football journalists seemed fanciful.

Fast forward to 2011 and around fifty football bloggers and writers gathered together to drink beer, eat pies, watch football and mingle or network with like-minded people at the Socrates football blogger meetup. Later this year the second NOPA awards for football bloggers will be held. It has attracted more entries and interest than the inaugural event. The football blogging sub culture is alive and in incredible rude health.

The makeup of these bloggers has changed. There are more football blogs than ever before, as younger writers who’ve grown up with the Internet take it further into the mainstream. Many of these aim for or are already writing for mainstream publications, either traditional publications like the Guardian and Mirror or newer entrants such as BT Life’s A Pitch. The lines are most definitely blurred.

Guest posts are common between bloggers, there are more niche focused football sites than anyone would have imagined possible, and the conversation across Twitter is constant. This is to say nothing on the thousands of football fans who don’t blog but do have football specific Twitter handles.

If you wanted to, you could spend all day consuming and talking about football. Some do. Like Sky Sports, football is never ending. There is always something to discuss, shout about or get outraged over. If you love football, it’s probably an ideal that sounds close to Utopia.

Which is why it probably sounds pretty odd that I’ve decided to, by and large, call it a day, right?

When I first pitched Soccerlens to see if they’d like me to write for them, I’d just moved to London from a journalism job into the world of PR. I wanted to keep my hand in at writing and, given I’d thought of setting up my own football blog, it seemed like a pretty good fit.

And it was, largely. From Soccerlens, led to other writing, some paid, some unpaid (I’m particularly proud of the work I wrote for Pitch Invasion), and then onto twofootedtackle.

But even in the early days, there was a certain weary cynicism of football blogging on my part, which takes a bit of explaining.

During my training as a journalist, one mantra was beaten into me: Tell your reader (or listener) something they don’t already know. And yes, blogging isn’t quite journalism (the lines are very blurred, but there are slim distinctions, I think), but that’s a maxim most writers would do well to consider.

The trouble is with sports journalism – and especially football journalism – is that much of it states the bleedin’ obvious. There is a large amount of dog-bites-man reports that ‘s practically dog-gets-taken-for-a-walk stories.

Of course no striker who has scored for the last five games isn’t going to target more goals, or a goalkeeper who has let in three goals will say, “Actually, I’d rather not keep a clean sheet next week.” In an entirely unscientific estimate, probably about half of sports news stories could write themselves, or be randomly generated, and stand a good chance of being roughly accurate.

And much as bloggers like to consider themselves independent, a large portion of what they write will be dictated by the news agenda; the same bland non-stories that tell us nothing new, although make for good headlines (and, ergo, good sales). Bloggers write because they want traffic, hits, think it’s important, or simply because they believe they should be writing about it

The are many exceptions to this, admittedly, and who head down a singular path. They are in the minority though (although I may be wrong here).

Yet, and I’m as guilty of this as anyone, The Good Blogger Manual and received wisdom says you should post content on a regular, even daily basis, and keep writing to bring the punters back. Which inevitably means regular regurgitation of the main Premier League headlines of the day and a discussion or post that, in truth, has probably been written twenty times elsewhere already, with at least two of them being better than the one you’re writing.

This is fine for some. It will bring in readers, and possibly advertisers and money. Or if you’re shrill and pushy enough, and a good self-publicist, then you’ll also pull in the readers. If that’s your desire, then fine. It’s not for me to say how to run a website.

But if writing something for the sake of it – and writing something already written at that – means that’s the task in hand, then I’d rather close down my laptop and do something more worthwhile with my life. There seems little point for me in writing just to either look like I have an opinion or tempt in extra readers who, in all honesty, probably already know about this and don’t need opinions from an oik like me.

In truth, the most read posts we’ve seen on twofootedtackle have been one-offs that happen to have been well-written and very occasionally happen to coincide with a genuine talking point. These readers rarely returned on a regular basis. It was the content rather than the site that enticed them in, not a steady slew of pieces on Carlos Tevez.

I’m also not getting any younger. There was a period where becoming a sports journalist looked like a distinct possibility. At the very least, I could have freelanced and made enough to get by on. But that lifestyle has never appealed and the days where I had the time and commitment to attempt re-entering journalism in a different discipline are long departed.

I have plenty of non-footballing interests. I have a busy, challenging non-football job that I genuinely enjoy, and I get to write as part of this. There’s no burning desire to leave my position or spend significant amounts of time moonlighting as a football writer on the side.

I have infinite respect for those who do stay up all hours honing their posts, but that life is also not for me anymore. And most importantly, I don’t want my football blogging to feel like work. A hobby should be fun. It shouldn’t be something I’d rather procrastinate over by putting in extra hours for work rather than churn out another post. And work is what it feels like at the moment.

Equally, I don’t feel the need to say yes to every offer that comes my way, be it from PR or from more respected publications offering the opportunity to write on their site. For free. Again, for some it’s a necessary evil to take on unpaid blogging to pick up better paid gigs (or should be, if they’re serious about making money). I don’t want to build my profile, and while I’m always flattered, I dislike the implication that I should be grateful that I’ve been considered and offered this opportunity.

This isn’t to suggest that my work is perfect – anyone reading this can tell I could benefit from an editor, for a start. But I’d rather do what feels right for me than jump because a well-known brand is offering me an unpaid platform for my ill-conceived ramblings.

All this is a rather long way of saying that what feels right for me right now is to step back from football blogging. There is no strong need or compulsion to produce regular football content, and much of what I’d want to write about will have been written better by somebody before I get round to placing finger on keyboard.

More than this, though, I want to remind myself why I fell in love with football in the first place. Some reading this will have also read a rant on why I’m falling out of love with modern football. Cathartic as writing that piece was, football and me are not done, my enthusiasm for the ridiculous basics of the game are undiminished. It’s just my passion isn’t currently served by spending time considering new angles on whatever game I’m watching or reading about. As I said at the start, Orson Welles and Transformers.

This isn’t storming away from football blogging, vowing never to as much make reference to Luton Town’s Johnstone’s Paint Trophy victory in any blog post. I know I’ll still be roused to opine and write on occasions, and there are most likely outlets to publish this. I just don’t envisage this more than a handful of times a year at the moment.

The podcast will remain. That’s one fortnightly hobby I genuinely look forward to. Unobjectively, I think it’s sounding better than ever (down, in no small part, to our guests).

But blogging has changed. And so have I. If I’m going write on a subject I’m passionate about, then I don’t want to chase page views or court the approval of the professionals (although I’d certainly welcome forensic feedback pointing out potential improvements).I just want to write something that tells the reader something they don’t already know.

If that takes two months to research and put together or two minutes to put down loose thoughts, then so be it. And at the moment, there’s nothing I can say that you don’t already know.

Apart from my experimental recipes. But then you didn’t come here for a lesson in cooking.

In fact, the strangest thing about Gawker calling out a rather iffy link-pimping organisation was the lack of mention of SEO in the piece.

Hamilton Nolan is right when he says inserting undisclosed paid for links into blog posts is an unethical betrayal of the readers’ trust (similar to undisclosed advertorial), especially when it’s done without editorial consent. Transparency is linking is, to me, equally as important as other forms of transparency in journalism and blogging.

But, even from as well-read a site as Gawker, a text link will only drive a certain level of traffic. And the traffic is not the issue, mainly, it’s about SEO and attempting to game Google. A link from a trusted or authoritative site as Gawker will push said site higher up search rankings (to put it rather simply).

I’m mildly surprised we haven’t seen more of this sort of thing. Links in online news stories from trusted sites are, in some cases, worth more than the articles themselves. If a website is less than transparent, they have the potential to earn a lot of money from link trading. Hopefully discoveries of this sort will be highlighted regularly to discourage underhand linking.

Linking is also a battle I’ve had in the past to convince other parts of companies or organisations of the importance of linking to relevant content or partner organisations. It’s not just important to credit articles, but it’s also important to link.

To some journalists or other areas of the company, a link may just be that. For those working online, links are an important and valuable tool that carry real currency in their medium. Content may be king, but hyperlinks are kingmakers.

At the start of the programme, there was an ident pushing viewers towards checking into the programme on Get Glue. It’s the first time I’ve seen the social entertainment network pushed in conjunction with a mainstream TV show, although Channel 4 did announce a partnership back in June.

Get Glue is, as Michael Litman says:

“…billed as a social network for entertainment. Think of it like Foursquare but for things you’re doing and not physical places. But it’s a similar mechanic. You can check in to TV, music and films and get badges and rewards to keep you doing it.

And just like that this whole social TV thing elevates itself to new levels. The last thing I can remember checking in to using Get Glue was the Royal Wedding. Thousands were doing the same too.”

Get Glue is certainly big in America. Logging into Get Glue last night (I’ve had an account for a while), Made In Chelsea was the 5th highest trending programme on Get Glue. It was also the only British programme in the trending list, bar Doctor Who, which was listed under BBC America, although it didn’t air during American primetime.

The American aspect is why it was a little surprising to see it on Made In Chelsea. Get Glue is very geared towards an American market, which is one of the reasons I’ve not really stuck with the service – it doesn’t feel as if it offers much for me as a UK TV viewer at the moment.

Even so, it will be interesting to see where Get Glue go with the activity check-in route. There’s the usual stickers and badges, but as we’ve seen with Foursquare, this in itself isn’t really a compelling reason to stick with the service and users need something else to stop them drifting off.

There’s also the huge backchannel that is Twitter. The microblogging service might not have set out to become a giant TV chatroom but it certainly ticks that box – just check the UK trending hashtags during primetime. Do users really want a second channel, just to check in to a programme.

That said, there are many social media projects aimed at TV bubbling under and there’s no doubt a lot of the main networks are looking at the best way to tap into this. One of my longstanding predictions is that social TV will be one of the next big advances in the social sphere. There is definitely an audience, as Twitter and Get Glue are showing, but it’s a question of finding the right service to hook people in.

Ironically, this could come from Facebook. The social media behemoth may be trying to ape aspects of Google+, but some of the predictions around F8 seem directly targeted at stealing Get Glue’s thunder. And this makes sense. People already use Facebook to talk about TV and are getting used to checking in with Facebook Places. A Get Glue-style service would be a logical and, potentially, well-used step.

It would be interesting to see what numbers Get Glue is doing in the UK, and how successful the E4 experiment is. There’s definitely a hint of the future there, at the start of Made In Chelsea. Whether that future belongs to Get Glue is another question entirely.

I say sad for two reasons. Firstly because it’s never fun to see local journalism cut back, even if the economic climate is heading that way.

But it’s also sad because this has been coming for a while, largely due to continually bad decisions from the Echo’s owners, Northcliffe.

I’m not saying that the daily Echo’s demise was preventable – it may well have been inevitable no matter what – but the paper could have been given much more of a fighting chance.

Even when I moved away from Devon, I made a point of picking up the Echo whenever I returned to visit friends and family. The past few times have been painful to read.

The last few Echos I’ve purchased have been a shell of the brash, confident publication that was happy to cause trouble for local politicians and had an instinctive connection with the communities it served.

What was in front of me was like seeing a once-proud athlete towards the end of his life. The only surprise about the Echo going weekly is it didn’t happen sooner.

Let me declare my feelings. I am an unashamed fan of local media done well. That is, after all, my background.

Yes, I’m well aware of the foibles and failures of local newspapers. They can be unnecessarily hyperbolic and trivial, often in the same news story. They can sometimes become parodies of themselves.

They could, as I found out from speaking to various focuses of the subjects of their stories, occasionally play somewhat fast and loose. At my old office, we had an file of some of their worst hits, including one story several experienced journalists were amazed they didn’t get pulled up on contempt charges.

But despite all this, much of the Echo is recalled with fondness. They were terrier-like in holding local politicians to account. When a big story broke, their coverage was never less than impressive. And they knew how to serve the community and readership.

Yes, some stories may have seemed mundane but locals from outlying areas really appreciated the coverage given to these smaller stories.

Given the Echo’s patch took in the regional capital city, seaside towns, rural market towns and sleepy villages, their ability to strike a balance with these readers was impressive.

When I was much younger and dreamt of going into journalism, at that point I always considered the Echo the paper I wanted to work for. And 20 years ago, it had a well-liked reputation with its readership.

Even as recently as six years ago, the Echo was a pretty impressive regional paper. It had a confidence and swagger about it. Yes, that also brought out some of the worst aspects, as detailed above, but it also brought out the best.

Working in a competitor (of sorts) newsroom at the same time, I would frequently roll my eyes, but would frequently be impressed with their scoops and determination to reflect and be a heart of the community they served.

Those qualities have seriously declined in recent years. Journalists were cut back. Fewer reporters meant a restricted ability to embed with the community. It became easier to spot the press releases in the paper.

It made sense, financially, to re-use the same reports from the sister Devon-wide Western Morning News. But this paper served a different audience, and it became harder to find distinctive news in the Echo as a result.

And then there’s the web, something regional media companies never seemed to get or be prepared to get.

For a period, the Echo went big into video, posting clips of any and every story, plus doing a news in 60 seconds, featuring cutaways to the headline in the paper.

It wasn’t particularly well done or thought through. A couple of people I knew there said they were given very little training. But at least they tried something, although it didn’t seem hard to see how this could have been much more focused, and relevant to their audience. And it asked a lot of print journalists to learn a new skill and do it well, with a minimum of training.

But at least it was better than how the web is currently being treated. The pages are, astonishingly, updated from a central location in a different county on the other side of the country.

News is often not uploaded until 10am. Sports reports, one of the key selling points of a local paper, are often uploaded up to two days after the game. By this stage, anybody interested will have found the news elsewhere.

There is little incentive for readers to discover or return to their website on a daily, even weekly basis. It is as if this part of the paper has been deliberately left to die.

Perhaps a weekly Echo will see the paper regain some of its swagger. Perhaps I’m optimistic but I think a daily could work in Exeter. Just not a daily in the current form. And they may need to be more innovative elsewhere.

But, going offline, it’s the local communities who will be hit the most by this. The Office of National Statistics shows that 23% of the UK population have no internet at home. In Devon and Somerset, that accounts for around 750,000 households. In the most rural areas of these counties, the number is, I would wager, even higher.

For the outlying villages in Devon, this means they are even further cut off from the news. One of the strengths of the Echo was balancing the ultra local with the big stories, and knowing each of these communities. What’s more, these were read and appreciated. Will that continue? It’s not as if many rural, elderly households can log online for their information.

Local businesses may also feel the pinch, initially. These small-to-medium size businesses probably don’t have the PR budget to go all out on a campaign, can’t go beyond a certain level of advertising, and often rely on local papers to print their good news stories. Will there be space for these?

I say initially, though, because for businesses there’s generally an opportunity to be innovative and less reliant on the local press.

But the local events, such as fundraisers or community days, may seriously struggle to compete for attention. Granted, these aren’t exactly the hardest-hitting news stories, but they do serve the community.

Sports fans and clubs wanting local reporting will also be badly served. That’s not to say there’s not alternatives online, but local sport is a staple of a local paper, and a key reason for purchase.

How many of those will discontinue reading it because the results are a week late? And how will the clubs reach out to attract new fans or members? The Echo says the coverage will be even better. Many will be skeptical.

Time will tell what effect a weekly Echo will have on Exeter, and East and Mid Devon. It may revitalise the paper. Or it may be a large step towards the eventual collapse. In the immediate term, the main losers are the readers.