Send me your tales of crappy CMSs, dodgy workarounds and other online publishing nightmares. Can be anonymous. Email.
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Have you ever listened to a journalist using a content management system? It usually goes something like this:
*Click*… *click*…*sigh*. Wait. Waiitt. “Oh for fu… oh, it’s working, I think”. *Click*. “Why’s that bit not showing? Oh right, I need to put that in there. I always forget that”. *Click*… *click*… “Oh it’s fuc…. oh… no… erm… oh right. Joe, that’s live now”.
And that’s on a good day. On a bad day, Joe gets told he’ll have to wait because a glitch means the page looks completely insane. Or all the text has been gobbled up never to be seen again. Or a crash at a crucial moment means your entire effort is blasted out into the digital void, leaving the journalist to explain to an editor that it did exist, and it was brilliant, but no, I didn’t back it up in Word because there was simply no time. I’ll stay late.
I’ve said it many times: Online journalism is, in many ways, the purest journalism of all. A medium defined not by constraints, but by possibility. Think about it: TV journalism needs pictures. Radio needs great audio. Print needs, well, a day’s lead time.
But in online, to quote Yomanda, you’re free to do what you want to do.
At least that’s how it should be. Content management systems (CMS) are the most neglected part of the online journalism process, a vital cog that, in too many newsrooms, is allowed to fall by the wayside through under – or over – investment, ignorance or internal politics.
Systems and processes are becoming defined by workarounds and hacks rather than good design and intuitive publishing – and this is a big big problem. Read Full Post »
Note: This post contains some very strong language.
It was when I realised I was reading comments from a user identifying himself as ‘MuslimFuckJew‘ that I realised something was very wrong with YouTube.
The username didn’t surprise me. You’ll always get offensive buffoons on the internet.
No, what surprised me was that rather than just stumbling across a soon-to-be-banned lunatic, MuslimFuckJew’s profile has in fact been active for almost a year.
In that time, he’d taken a moment to fill in his profile.
Occupation? “nigGER HATING FUCKING HATING THEM NIGGERS”
Favourite film? “The HoLOLocaust live tapes: Jews get gassed”
Books? “Mein Kampf, and Around Blacks Never Relax”
It’s no surprise then, with members like this, that my friend refers to the world’s most popular video-sharing as the ‘arsehole of the web’.
It’s a war kick-started by Nick Davies’ brilliant book Flat Earth News. In it, he detailed the worrying picture of newsrooms up and down the land aimlessly churning out copy based on press releases and wire copy.
Faithful reproduction of wire copy still goes on, there’s no denying that. Indeed, with every new publication brought to market, the churnalism problem grows worse.
Yet various unofficial and unscientific observations of the newsrooms I’ve worked in suggest that the blind churnalism of press releases is actually decreasing.
Yes, much of the news is still powered by press releases and PR reps getting, to use a friend’s posh ghetto phrase, “up in one’s grill”. But journalists are aware of it now. Journalists are aware that readers are aware, and that by churning out press releases, they are doing a disservice to the industry.
Not only that, but the momentum of Davies’ book has filtered up to the ruling classes and – I’m hope I’m not being naive here – I’d suggest that some publications that were getting deep into the unwavering horror that is constant churnalism have turned a corner.
But watch out. There’s a new menace in town – something I’m now calling the ‘spinfographic’*.
Now I’m not one of those people to hop, Daily Mail-stylee, onto swear words that creep onto the airwaves.
Personally, when it comes to adult-orientated output, I don’t have a problem with a few naughty words in relevant context or even for, as this example will show, for comical effect.
This morning, on the Today programme, in a debate about whether we should still be obsessed with class, author A.N Wilson uttered the word ‘bollocks’ in a way that can only be described as a) measured and b) perfect.
Is it time for the word to be downgraded? It’s nowhere near the s-, f- and c-words of our lives, and when used in such a magnificent way it seems a shame to banish it away like a naughty child.
Context: A.N Wilson is talking about the perception that Downtown Abbey is a faithful representation of the Britain of yesteryear.
