Recently in Media Category

How many severed feet does it take to make the British news? Six, apparently.

• BBC News: Foot mystery baffles Mounties
• Telegraph: Sixth foot washes up on Canadian beach
• Guardian: Six feet under
• Times Online: Sixth foot washed ashore in Canadian mystery

Canada's not boring today.

How about one of these? It's 12½ feet wide! If you don't have room, what better excuse do you need to move house?

Panasonic unveiled this beauty at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. Its screen is the equivalent of nine 50-inch sets. The price was not revealed, but it's a step up from Panasonic's 103-inch (8ft 6in) version, which cost £35,000 when it launched. Start saving those pennies now.

The Economist sent me an offer to buy their books at 25% off the original price. I tried to buy one via their web site three times. Each time I reached the "checkout", the site told me that I had nothing in my shopping basket. So I gave up and turned to Amazon, where I purchased the book at half price. Clearly, technology and pricing are not among these Economists' strengths.

So I'm in the park with my just-turned-three-year-old daughter when she asks:

Daddy, can I have an ice cream?
I don't think we have time. We've got to go soon.
There is always a way, Daddy.
What?
Stephanie says, there is always a way!
Who says?
STEPHANIE!

Tyler Brûlé is a famous Manitoban (one of 45 apparently, if you exclude the less well known members of Bachman Turner Overdrive, but include Winnie-the-Pooh) who has just launched a new magazine on the world.

Prior to launching this latest advertising vehicle, he wrote (among other things) a weekly column for the Financial Times titled Fast Lane. For reasons that are unclear, he left the FT at the end of 2006, and moved his column to the International Herald Tribune, but the content remains the same. In fact, the following comment placed by Philip Rowell of Bangkok, Thailand, on the online version of Brûlé's latest IHT column (see Tyler Brûlé on the unthinkable: A seamless flight) sums up the Manitoban's stock in trade rather well:

I have nothing but the utmost respect for Brule. Anyone who can convince two major global newspapers (first the FT, now the IHT) to pay him for writing exactly the same article week in week out for years on end has to be a genius.

Airports, Heathrow terrible, Japan good, three countries in four days, first class, my beloved assistant, a couple of glasses of champagne then sleep until landing, list of suitable luggage suppliers... Brule, please, we get it already. We know you spend your life on airplanes, and we're really very impressed - honestly. But how about trying to write about something you experience after you land, rather than regaling us with mind-numbingly tedious tales of security clearances and check-ins. We have all flown before, you know.

Stop it. Please.

The problem for Brûlé is that he evolved from a young, striving journalist into an ambitious, successful editor, but is now rapidly becoming a middle-aged business man. Consequently, his personal routine has become just that — a routine that's unfit for public consumption more than once.

PS — You can read Robert Fulford's comments on the new magazine in All style, with just a dash of substance.

All of a sudden Gordon Ramsay is everywhere: on the cover of magazines (James Steen grills... Gordon Ramsay), winning more awards (And the winner is... the woman who tied Gordon down) and even in The New Yorker (The Taming of the Chef). Surely the market for his particular style of entertainment must peak soon? Regardless of what happens next, it's clear that his publicist (Sauce Communications) already deserves a bonus.

The Financial Times, like an increasing number of other newspapers, has jumped onto the new media bandwagon yet again — this time with podcasts from its print journalists. If your visiting London and want to know what cultural events are currently worth seeing, tune in to FT.com's Artcast and in less than 15 minutes you'll be up to date.

FastCompany magazine has published an interesting article on simplicity as a design feature (see The Beauty of Simplicity) and it includes the following truism:

"Technology is this huge blessing because we can do anything with it, and this huge curse because we can do anything with it."

Context is therefore everything.

Newspapers are struggling these days. It seems fewer and fewer people read a newspaper regularly, and circulation revenue has decreased as a result. So the press is trying all kinds of ploys to attract "readers", even going so far as to give away DVDs of full-length movies each week in the attempt.

Today, for example, the following papers are giving away the following films:

• The Daily Telegraph - Whistle Down the Wind
• The Independent - Wings of Desire (aka Der Himmel über Berlin)
• The Times - The Last Emperor

In keeping with the national trend, my wife and I rarely buy a weekend paper. However, in recent weeks we've been tempted to do so just to obtain the free DVD with which to improve our weekend viewing. Not long ago, your choice of newspaper was often seen as an expression of your political views. Now it's more likely to reflect your taste in films!

You can read more about how these DVD offers are turning readers into "newspaper tarts" at the BBC's web site (see How can papers afford to give away DVDs?).

Yesterday provided yet more evidence that the internet is transforming the media. In this case The Guardian newspaper is behaving like a radio broadcaster. Yesterday's entry on its Conference Blog (New Labour is really a post-Thatcherite party) contains a link to an audio interview with Tony Benn at this week's Labour Party conference in Brighton. So if you haven't time to read the paper, you may find it more convenient to listen to it instead!

Do you remember Apple's television advertising campaign commonly referred to as Switch from a few years ago? There are a number of parodies floating around the internet, at least one of which (starring Will Ferrell) is still available online (Careful - it's 4.1 Meg).

Well, Tod Maffin of the CBC has produced his own version to highlight one of the risks inherent in the current lockout affecting Canada's national broadcaster. It's pretty good, but you probably have to be Canadian to appreciate it fully.

The BBC has started to provide MP3 recordings of some of its radio programmes. In cyberspace this phenomenon is called "podcasting" (after the ubiquitous Apple iPod which can be used to play these files) and it's all the rage.

I'm a cynic when it comes to the hype surrounding podcasting. It's been simple to record radio programmes on tape for most of my life, and it's been possible to make your own MP3 recordings automatically, using software such as Total Recorder, for several years already. So I find it difficult to get excited about recording them digitally now.

Nevertheless, I welcome the BBC's initiative, if only because one of my favourite Radio 4 programmes is included in the trial — In Business. See the BBC's Download and Podcast Trial for more information.

Here's 1 minute and 47 seconds of poetry from NPR that's sure to put a smile on your face as this week comes to an end: Reduplicatives.

The cover of this week's Economist magazine is simply beautiful:

Palaces are for royalty. We're just people with a bank account.

Grace Kelly to Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief (1955)

You may be familiar with BBC New Online's UK Front pages web page. Or then again, you may not.

In any case, I've grown tired of clicking on each newspaper's link sequentially so I've created my own page that displays all of the available front pages at once.

You can access it at http://www.kevinlaurence.net/ukpapers.php.

Note however, that the images come from the BBC's web site and are therefore ultimately beyond my control. For example, the front pages were available for 1 January 2005, but not 2 January 2005. Could this be the result of someone at the BBC not working on Sundays? Use at your own risk.

Update (2 Oct 2005): The BBC ceased providing images of the UK's newspaper front pages in early August 2005, so my "summary" page no longer works. A similar service is currently available at www.newseum.org, but few British newspapers are included in its database.

The best book review that I read this year was published in the London Review of Books. In Mao meets Oakeshott, John Lanchester reviewed Mind the Gap: The New Class Divide in Britain by Ferdinand Mount.

Here's the blurb:

In this provocative and ruthlessly frank book, Ferdinand Mount argues that there is a new class divide in Britain which is just as vicious and hard to get rid of as the old one. Through acute observation - drawing on every aspect of life from soap operas, speech patterns and gardening to education and the distribution of wealth - he demolishes the illusion that we live in a classless society and shows how the worst-off in Britain today are more culturally deprived than their parents or grandparents.

I have to admit straight away that I haven't read Mind the Gap, but I found Lanchester's review so interesting that I've read it more than once.

There are just so many observations in it that ring true to me, beginning with these two sentences from the first paragraph:

Britain produces an extraordinary amount of commentary, in print, on television and on radio; so much that the production of opinion can seem to be our dominant industry, the thing we are best at and most take to.

The problem with our public culture is not that it is low-grade: it is that it is fluent, clear, coherent, often vividly expressed, and more or less entirely free of fresh intellectual content. You can go whole weeks reading the broadsheet press without encountering a new idea; you can listen to hundreds of hours of broadcast debate and encounter nothing but received wisdoms.

And then there's The crisis is related to the fact that our culture now values only two things, money and celebrity, and the poor by definition don't have either.

It's a great review of what sounds like a really interesting, if depressing, book. When I re-read it recently, however, one section in particular stood out:

Our Downers - to use Mount's preferred term for the losers in the British class system - are, by world standards, culturally impoverished. It is difficult to be precise and non-subjective about this, but there seems to be a genre of working-class life in England which has no equivalent in the rest of the developed world. The deprivation in question is not material: we're not talking about child labour, or anything which by global standards - the standards of the four billion people who live on less than $4 a day - is considered absolute poverty. It is difficult to quantify this deprivation, though Mount does have one or two good examples, such as the fact that 42 per cent of all burglaries happen to 1 per cent of all homes, principally those belonging to the poor and/or single parents: so the less you have, the more likely you are to have it stolen.

That last statement is in direct contrast to the reporting of recent events here in London. As this month's Economist London Briefing pointed out:

The murder of a respected City financier in late November shocked Londoners. John Monckton, a 49-year-old fund manager, was stabbed to death by two burglars who forced their way into his £3m home in Chelsea, a smart neighbourhood. His wife, Homeyra, was severely injured. Police arrested two men in connection with the killing on December 14th. A third suspect was arrested and bailed last month.

This was the latest in a string of violent assaults on householders in London's richer parts. In October, Robert Symons, a 45-year-old-teacher, died in similar circumstances in his home in Chiswick. And in September, a retired paediatrician and his wife were stabbed to death in a gated estate in Highgate Hill. Violent crime is worsening across the capital, particularly knife-crime in some boroughs, according to crime statistics.

So what's the lesson in all this? The less you have, the more likely you are to have it stolen; but the more you had, the more likely it'll appear in the press.

Here's an interesting story: Bloug Entry (Dec 02, 2004: Using Search Log Analysis to Predict the Future).

It seems the Financial Times analyses it web site search statistics to identify unpublished stories that interest its readers, and the editorial staff then consider running stories on those subjects.

This approach to news-making obviously has significant implications for the traditional definition of "news worthy", and gives new meaning to the suggestion that the media simply "give people what they want to hear".

Well, I thought it was interesting!

News of the Caribbean island of Dominica has been like waiting for a bus. Nothing for years, and then three items come along all in a row.

The first reference to the nature island of the Caribbean was on television a few of weeks ago. BBC2 included footage of the island in its documentary series on family history, Who do you think you are?, when featuring the news presenter Moira Stuart. Some of Ms Stuart's maternal ancestors came from Dominica.

Then on Wednesday BBC Radio 4's programme Woman's Hour reported on the Dominican author and politician Phyllis Shand Allfrey. It seems some of her short stories have been republished.

Finally on Friday Woman's Hour interviewed Baroness Scotland of Asthal QC, who's been declared Parliamentarian of the Year. Not only does she have family history in Dominica, but she's also a member of the Bar of Antigua and the Commonwealth of Dominica.

With all that out of the way, it's probably safe to assume that we won't hear anything more about Dominica for the rest of the decade.

This week's Economist magazine contains an interesting article (subscription required) on the survival of high street bookshops despite the increasing success of their online rivals.

It seems bookshops were expected to disappear once we'd all switched to Amazon:

"Everyone got the internet wrong when they assumed it would replace retail," says James Heneage, the boss of Ottakar's. "It's simply a new channel." That may be a comforting thought for other [high street] retailers as Christmas approaches.

Of course, Marshall McLuhan wouldn't have been surprised. In 1964 he wrote:

"...it is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium. It is only today that industries have become aware of the various kinds of business in which they are engaged. When IBM discovered that it was not in the business of making office equipment or business machines, but that it was in the business of processing information, then it began to navigate with clear vision. The General Electric Company makes a considerable portion of its profits from electric light bulbs and lighting systems. It has not yet discovered that, quite as much as AT&T, it is in the business of moving information."

From Understanding media: the extensions of man (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.)

This morning's edition of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 included two interesting stories just before it ended.

1. A report on the difficulty in finding a religiously themed Advent calendar in the UK this year.
2. A report on George W. Bush's first official visit to Canada.

Both are worth hearing, and available online for the next seven days (RealPlayer required).

The BBC has replaced Alistair Cooke's Letter From America with a programme called A View From (see Team 'replaces' Cooke's Letter), and one of the new correspondents is Therese Mills, editor of Trinidad and Tobago newspaper Newsday.

Ms Mills' first letter was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this morning, and literally told the story of a political storm in a Trinidad teacup. You can listen to it here for the next seven days.

Two opposing headlines published today by the BBC indicate that BBC News (at least) hasn't a clue what's going on in the UK propery market:

1. BBC NEWS | Business | House prices move higher in July
2. BBC NEWS | Business | House prices 'ease as rates rise'

If you read the details, you may realise that these two trends are not necessarily mutually exclusive; but the BBC's tabloid headline writers simplify news to such an extent that it really makes me question the organisation's credibility sometimes.

BBC Radio 3 has a new web site, although the casual viewer might not notice much of a difference. However, the most important changes are behind the scenes, and both the visible and invisible changes will apparently make finding information about Radio 3's programmes easier — especially if you can't remember what you heard several days ago, but now desparately want to find out.

The BBC has excelled at distributing its traditional content digitally, and if you like even a fraction of its output and spend time sitting in front of a computer, then you're bound to approve of the Beeb's online initiatives.

A recent page from CBC Radio 3

However, if you want to see what "new media" can really do, you need to tune in to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio 3. But be warned — the only similarlity is the name. CBC Radio 3 is not classical in any sense. It's not even really radio as we know it. It's an online, new-media magazine, featuring contemporary photography, photojournalism, interviews, poetry, videos and lots of recordings from Canada's independent popular music scene, including live concert recordings. [Note - You need a broadband connection to the Internet to really appreciate CBC Radio 3.]

During the current 36-day general election campaign, for example, Radio 3 has been publishing the personal agendas of 36 ordinary (i.e. unknown) Canadians on video. Given that politics is a subject about which few "ordinary" people feel passionate these days (excluding, of course, the notable issue of the Iraq war), it was interesting to see and hear this selection of personal opinions on Canada's priorities as a nation.

In January The Globe and Mail published an interesting article (see Indie music and beyond) on CBC Radio 3 that included the following quote from its Executive Director, Robert Ouimet:

"The question I get a lot is: 'Surely you want them to go to the website and then get them to radio. Isn't that the goal?' Well, yeah, if they do that, that's great. But that's not the imperative. The goal is to introduce them to the stuff that the CBC makes and if they get it on-line and never go to the radio, that's totally okay."

The CBC used the web to attract a new, youthful audience that had long ago abandoned the network, and it believes that new media can be an end in itself. It's not simply a case of using the web to support the rest of the network's programming. Apart from the music, CBC Radio 3's output is unavailable anywhere else.

The BBC on the other hand seems to view the web firstly as a temporary archive and then secondly as a source of complementary information in support of its broadcasts. BBC Online is not really intended to be your final destination. Everything it produces is either rooted in a conventional BBC broadcast of some kind, or intended to inform you of one.

To be fair, I don't think the Internet presented the BBC with as much of an opportunity as it did the CBC. Young people in Britain never abandoned the BBC the way a generation of Canadian kids fled from the CBC. The CBC never had the equivalent of BBC Radios 1, 2, 5 or television programmes such as Top of the Pops, so the Internet provided it with a far greater opportunity to expand the range of its output and the demographics of its audience.

Nevertheless, it would be nice to see both organisations borrowing from each other's online strategy. Canadians could make good use of an archive, such as that provided by the BBC's Listen Again service, and the BBC should really commit to the web as an end in itself if wants to continue playing a leading role in the creative life of the UK.

In April 1960 Alistair Cooke told the Chattanooga Times:

Television is a gorgeous girl led astray early in life by a travelling salesman. She is taken round the country as a come-on for his detergent.

The topic for the 2004 Shell Economist Writing Prize has been announced, and it's all about migration:

This year's competition poses the question: Import workers or export jobs? Should developing nations be allowed to 'poach' skilled professional labour from countries who have helped pay for this expertise? Or is the influx of immigrants, whether skilled or unskilled, a positive force, bringing either expertise or ambition and hard work to the host nation?

The history of the movement of people and populations shows how dynamically immigrants can change or benefit host countries. But when and how does it go wrong? Is it a question of balance? Or (and) of matching skills and needs?

The debate on movement of people ranges from the rational to the emotional. What clarity can you contribute to mankind's choices over the freedom to move? What may it mean for the way we work? What may it mean for our sense of place, of residence, of identity and of local and global belonging?

Write 2,000 words by 20 August, 2004, and you might win $20,000.

I registered for and implemented Google AdSense on this website today. So certain pages will now display advertisements related to the page content, or at least that's the theory. In practice I'm not too sure how successful it will be. Within seconds of adding the relevant code to my carbon paper essay, Google chose to display two ads for quill pens (the essay does mention the quill pen, but I'd no idea you could still buy them).

I decided to sign up for AdSense because every few weeks someone writes to me via email and enquires about purchasing some carbon paper. Just today I received a request for a box of 500 sheets from someone in Alexandria, Egypt. Egypt was also the source of another request a few months ago, but that one was for 15,000 tons of the stuff!

As much as I'd like to help these people, I'm not in the carbon paper business. So I thought that the relevant ads from Google might prove useful to anyone searching for carbon paper who stumbles across my site. And who knows? It might even generate sufficient revenue eventually to cover the cost of this site.

So if you're ever in the market for a new quill pen, you know where to come.

Alistair Cooke died last month only three weeks after retiring at the age of 95, and it's difficult to distinguish cause and effect. Did he retire because the end was so near, or did he lose the will to live because he now had nothing to do? In a prescient statement a few years ago he said "I've noticed that if you retire you keel over" (Alistair Cooke's first letter). "Speak for yourself" is what most of us are probably thinking, and that's precisely what he did throughout his long career.

Apparently, he started out with ambitions to become an actor, but decided that telling America's story was far more interesting than anything on the stage. He fell in love with America's dynamic spirit of free enterprise, and became a US citizen in 1941. Given his subject, it's highly ironic that he should succeed largely through non-profit, public broadcasting. Would his career have lasted as long had he been exposed to the harsh realities of the commercial world? I doubt it. Despite a publicly-subsidised audience of millions, Cooke still appealed to relatively few. Nevertheless, he clearly knew how to make the best of both his worlds: dynamic, aggressive America and inquisitive, but world-weary Britain.

Newsmap provides an interesting view of the news media's priorities, as captured and classified by Google News.

The news in Canada, the UK and the US as displayed on Newsmap

Each news item is allocated screen space according to the number of stories published about it. More popular stories appear larger; less popular stories are smaller. The stories are also colour-coded according to the "section" in which they would appear in a newspaper: World - dark brown, Nation (domestic news) - light brown, Sports - olive green, Business - blue, Entertainment - teal, for example. It's also possible to compare several of Google's national versions, all of which means that you can use Newsmap to analyse cultural differences in the world's news media.

And what do you find if you do?

Here are the top three priorities (as of earlier today) for three countries with which I'm familiar:

• Canada: World, Sports, Business
• UK: World, Sports, Business
• US: Sports, World, Nation (domestic news)

A closer examination reveals some even more interesting differences. World news receives two and half times as much coverage in the UK than in the US, and even Canada publishes approximately 30% more World news (proportionally) than the US. Instead of World news the US devotes its attention to Sports (2.5 times more than the UK) and domestic news (Nation).

Domestic news (Nation) is lowest in Canada, which also gives the most space/time to Entertainment. Business and technology are very similar in all three countries. Health is the smallest category everywhere.

So what does this tell us? Well, it would seem that the stereotypical cliches are all true. America is obsessed with itself; nothing much happens in Canada; and Britain still believes it can punch above its weight on the world stage.

At the age of 95 Alistair Cooke has retired. So after 58 years of weekly broadcasts, Letter from America has come to an end.

If wisdom is a function of experience, Cooke must now be very wise indeed.

The BBC does not have a good reputation for reporting business news, and despite my affection for In Business on Radio 4, I'm inclined to agree.

Today's financial results from the online bank Egg provide a good example. In French woes double Egg's losses the BBC focused on the bank's negative performance in France:

Internet bank Egg has doubled its losses as its French business helped push the UK firm deeper into the red. The troubled group, which is 79% owned by insurer Prudential, said its annual pre-tax losses for 2003 had risen to £34.4m ($64.8m), up from 16.6m in 2002. Egg said it made an operating profit of £72.8m in the UK, however that figure was overshadowed by an operating loss of £89.1m in France.

Meanwhile, buried almost at the bottom of a brief report about this morning's opening changes in the FTSE 100 index, the Financial Times stated the following:

Internet bank Egg edged 3.3 per cent higher on news that it was tightly managing its spending on its France business while parent Prudential completed the disposal of its 79 per cent stake. Losses at its French business nearly doubled, to £89.1m although in the UK operating profits rose more than 100 per cent to £72.8m.

Now I haven't checked, but I'm sure both reports are factually correct. Nevertheless, I think they give radically different impressions about the bank's performance. The BBC was obviously just repeating the basics of the facts and figures that Egg itself announced today, while the story in the FT is really an attempt to explain this morning's changes in the stock market.

In publishing its more simplistic report the BBC gave the impression that the news was all bad, and quite clearly that was not the case. Well, it wasn't the case for the stock market investors who thought the shares worth buying this morning.

The point that this example really illustrates is that the news is filtered for most of us by other people who can't help imparting their own interpretation of events, even when they want to remain objective. If such bias can creep into a fairly staid business report, think what could happen with a subject like Iraq.

P.S. - The real story with Egg is how a doubling of its French losses provides any support for the claim that it is "tightly managing its spending on its France business". I wonder if anyone will/can explain that?

Having mentioned the Shell Economist Writing Prize in July (Do we need nature?), it seems appropriate to acknowledge this year's winner. Diane Brooks Pleninger won first prize for her essay titled Interview with a fungus (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).

Ms Brooks Pleninger turned the original question on its head, and it doesn't take a mycologist to guess how the fungus answered it.

Yet another staunchly right-wing entrepreneur proves that he cannot be trusted with other people's money:

• Conrad Black steps down
• Hollinger chief quits over undisclosed fees
• Lord Black: from invincibility to ignominy

Still, what can we expect from someone whose father's last words to his son were "life is hell, most people are bastards and everything is bullshit"?

People say the strangest things sometimes. I've just heard Harriet Harman, the current Solicitor General, say the following on BBC Radio 4's programme Woman's Hour:

"I'm not in favour of women killing their husbands."

It was such a non sequitur that I laughed out loud! Secretly, of course, I'm quite relieved.

To put it in context, this is what she was discussing:

Currently a defendant will be found guilty of manslaughter not murder if he or she can successfully argue they were provoked. It has resulted in several recent high profile cases where men have received a sentence of less than five years for killing their partners.

But the Solicitor General Harriet Harman is determined to change that law and joins Martha [the presenter] to tell her what she'd like to see in its place.

I've been busy, which explains that lack of posts recently, but there are a number of items worth mentioning

The first is being broadcast as I write on BBC Radio 4. It's a documentary originally broadcast last May about a farmer who refused to move out of his home when the M62 motorway was built in West Yorkshire in the 1960s. Three lanes of traffic now go speeding past both sides of Ken Wild's house 24 hours a day.

At one point someone says "the purpose of life is death", and the rest of the half-hour programme makes for equally compelling radio. You should be able to listen to it on the BBC's Listen Again page, or read about it as Life in the fast lane.

Given the debate in recent weeks about the wisdom of naming Dr. David Kelly as a BBC source, I've wondered several times why BBC News attributes only a fraction of its online content to specific members of its staff. Why don't they identify the author of every piece?

For example, the top news story as I write is BBC News | Politics | Kelly family points finger at MoD, and it is not attributed to anyone in particular. It does contain a related video link to a report by "The BBC's Jonathan Beale", but that has almost certainly been lifted from the BBC's conventional broadcasting output (i.e. television), where reporters are always clearly identified.

Sometimes the author of an online story is identified (see BBC News | Education | More GCSE exam entries fail by Gary Eason), and sometimes a story is exclusively devoted to the opinions of one of the BBC's star correspondents (see BBC News | Politics | Profound questions raised by Kelly tragedy featuring Andrew Marr). So why the inconsistency? Why are the reporters named in some cases and not others?

There is a precedent in print, of course. Newspaper editorials are usually unsigned, and the Economist has a long tradition of not acknowledging authors, with the exception of its lengthy "surveys" and reviews of books written by its staff. Perhaps, the BBC has adopted some of these practices now that the web has forced it into "print"?

Convergence would appear to be one of the effects of the Internet. Broadcasters are publishing electronic "newspapers", and newspapers are "broadcasting" their content electronically.

Coincidentally (or is it?), the UK Government has announced a review of the BBC's online services (see BBC News | Entertainment | Analysis: BBC online review). I hope it helps to resolve some of the confusing inconsistencies that have developed with the popular adoption of the "new media".

P.S. - Why is that story about the review of BBC Online classified as "Entertainment"? Since when is everything associated with the BBC necessarily entertaining?

Rabbi Lionel Blue had some helpful hints for holiday makers on this morning's Today programme in his talk entitled How to survive a holiday (RealPlayer required). Chief among his recommendations was not to make love in an airport, which strikes me as wise advice no matter who you are, but particularly if you're a rabbi.

Thought for the day is part of the BBC's religion and ethics programming, and its web site allows you to search for and listen to previous reflections from all your favourite "thinkers".

There's less than a month left in which to write the next award-winning essay in the Shell Economist Writing Prize. If you are not familiar with the competition, the winning entries from previous years have been impressive. A Ramble to Africa (Adobe Acrobat Reader required), which addressed the question Going faster, but where? in 2001, was particularly memorable.

This year's topic is Do we need nature? and a quick search of Daypop reveals that a couple of weblogs have already discussed it. For an analysis of the strategic options available to aspiring authors see Secretly Ironic: Do we need nature. For a less than rigorous debate featuring some serious cynics see MetaFilter for June 19, 2003.

So hurry up and get writing. You could win $20,000 US.

On the weekend the Financial Times magazine published an article on the increasing popularity of the BBC in the United States (see Trust me, I'm British). Apparently, the BBC is now the main source of international news for PBS, and one of BBC America's producers is quoted as saying "What the Americans really value from us is the broader agenda".

I can well believe that statement given Elizabeth Lane Lawley's amusing post titled why I don't watch the news. The fact that there are still signs of intelligent life in the British mainstream media is one of the reasons I like living in the UK.

Well, blogging has certainly become mainstream now. This morning BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme Today introduced its listeners to weblogs (see Today RealOne Player required). The interview lasted all of 3 minutes, but that was sufficient for Cory Doctorow to explain that the new medium has two strongly attractive characteristics for journalists:

• complete freedom to write whatever you want without any editorial interference.
• the possibility of almost instant, gratuitous feedback.

Consequently the hosts, Edward Stourton and James Naughtie, both agreed that blogging sounds like fun!

What is going on at the Financial Times? Recent stories in the weekend edition have been headlined:

• "Big knickers are back but this time they're sexy"
• "Super grannies: Juggling work and grandchildren"
• "Don't get left high and dry: Frequent flying can be a disaster for your skin".

It's as if the FT has just decided that the weaker sex isn't so weak after all.

The real answer of course is a new strategy designed to broaden the pink business newspaper's traditionally narrow appeal. It seems that 2002 was a bad year for the FT, largely due to the decline in advertising in the UK, but also because the many redundancies and layoffs in the finance industry have resulted in fewer people reading the paper.

The paper's response to this decline has included a half-hearted new design, some new content (more sports and fashion), a new weekend magazine, and a new direct marketing campaign (see A warmer shade of pink and FT seeks broader appeal).

The latest news about this change suggests that it has had an initial positive effect. Apparently, the readership increased by 5% in the first week after the new "look" was launched (see FT relaunch boosts sales figures ).

However I'd be surprised if these changes really do increase the market for the FT in the long term. For one thing the direct marketing campaign seems like an unmitigated disaster. As Roy Greenslade writing in the Guardian earlier this month pointed out, the campaign has targeted the FT's current customers:

Pearson, the FT's owner, may see this revamp as the paper's last hurrah under its umbrella, and it certainly isn't skimping on its outlay, having spent some £3m, including £1m on a hit-and-miss direct mail shot to win over new readers. This has resulted in me being the proud recipient of vouchers which are saving me £12 over the next month. I am now able to receive a £1 FT for half the price every day until May 23. As a regular reader, of course, that promotion is irrelevant to me, so Pearson is sacrificing sales income it can ill afford.

I too have received these vouchers, but I received two sets because the FT still thinks I live at my previous address as well as my new one (I moved five months ago). These two offers are staggered so I can now receive the FT at a discount until August 22^nd. Nor does the fact that I already subscribe to FT.com seem to have registered with the FT's marketing department. They seem to believe that I will not only want to read the paper both on-line and in print, but that I am prepared to pay twice for the privilege.

I predict that the FT will go back to the drawing board after the summer.

Sometime ago I wondered why the media often refer to Iraq's President Saddam Hussein as simply "Saddam". Wouldn't this abbreviation be equivalent to referring to his main opponent as "George"? And if so, why does the media discriminate in this way?

Well I struggled for a while to find the answer, but it turns out that Saddam Hussein's full name is "Saddam Hussein al-Majd al-Tikriti". Most Arab names have a genealogical structure; individuals are called after their father and paternal grandfather and may also reveal the geographical region from which they come. So we can to some extent dissect the President of Iraq's name as follows:

• "Saddam" is the epithet that he chose upon becoming ruler of Iraq and is derived from the Persian word meaning "crush".
• "Hussein" was his father's first name
• "al-Majd" refers to his paternal grandfather.
• "al-Tikriti" refers to the town closest to his place of birth, Tikrit.

So, a rough English translation of his name would be "The Crusher/son of Hussein/son of Majd/from Tikrit". In addition, his true first name was apparently "Hussein", but that was dropped when he assumed the name "Saddam".

You can probably see why journalists may have been uncertain about what to call him. While the BBC uses "Saddam", Canada's Globe And Mail calls him "Mr. Hussein" (see MP wants Hussein to face trial). For more details see the CTV article You say Saddam, I say Hussein - what's in a name? and from Slate in 1998 What's the Name of Saddam Hussein?

One of the most consistently good reads on the web is Mark's Mailbox, the letters page on the web site of right-wing columnist Mark Steyn. Steyn is a Canadian, but he currently lives in New Hampshire, having spent several years working in London. His work regularly appears in the National Post in Canada, The Daily Telegraph in Britain and the Chicago Sun-Times in the U.S., among other publications. As his web site (SteynOnline) pretentiously proclaims, Steyn is a "one-man global content provider". (If you see a link between Steyn and publications once owned by Hollinger International Inc., you'd be correct; The Lord Black of Crossharbour is apparently a big fan of Steyn's work.)

I don't read his columns very often. Although his writing is frequently very good, Steyn's views are too extremist for me, and rarely substantiated by any serious objective analysis. Mark's Mailbox, on the other hand, is a weekly must-read. Here's a sample just from this week's letters page:

You are such a hateful person! There is nothing good that appears in your negative, inflammatory columns! I have begged the Chicago Sun-Times to stop running your pieces. You want to bring on the war? Only a crazy person would talk that way. Perhaps you can share a room with BC Premier Gordon Campbell when he goes in for substance abuse rehab as it is clear that only someone drunk or on drugs would write the things you do. May you be surrounded by neighbours who all vote for the NDP!

David L. Blatt
Chicago

There really isn't much chance that Steyn's columns can compete with fan mail as entertaining as that! I highly recommend his web site, but stick to the letters page for a really good read.

Here's another example of the media interpreting the same news in different ways. This morning the BBC and the Financial Times both reported the latest change in house prices as determined by the Halifax Building Society. The difference was that the BBC focussed on the direction of the trend (no news there really, prices are still going up), while the FT reported the change in the strength of the trend (not as strong as in recent months).

The BBC headline was Housing market stays strong and the article lead with:

The housing market remained strong during January with prices increasing by 1.5%, new figures suggest. The UK's biggest mortgage lender, Halifax, said low interest rates and low unemployment were continuing to drive the market.

The increase pushed the average cost of a property up to £123,451.

Prices for the three months to the end of January are now 24.9% higher than they were during the same period the previous year, the survey suggests.

While the Financial Times reported UK house price growth slows in January:

The pace of house price growth slowed last month, in line with predictions that the overheated residential property market will start to cool this year, according to Halifax.

Britain's largest lender on Wednesday said that prices rose 1.5 per cent last month over December, taking the growth rate over the three months to January to 24.9 per cent compared with the previous year.

Last month Halifax had to adjust its figures which meant the index fell 2.1 per cent from November, to stand 26.4 per cent higher on an annual basis. Without the technical adjustments, the index would have risen 1 per cent in December over November.

So is the trend in house prices good or bad, or is the change in the trend significant? The media can't make up its mind, so it's up to you.

This week BBC 4 broadcast a two-part documentary entitled Holidays in the Axis of Evil. To quote the web site blurb:

The Bush regime claims that North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and Cuba are part of an "axis of evil". In a remarkable two-part travelogue, reporter Ben Anderson, armed with a hidden camera and a tourist map, visits all six rogue states and tries to find the reality of life in some of the most repressive regimes in the world.

Anderson was asked what possessed him to make such a potentially dangerous trip:

"The idea evolved after the second Axis of Evil speech when they added Syria, Libya and Cuba to the list. There's no evidence so far to link the six countries and not one of them is linked to 11 September. When you say axis it suggests some kind of link and the only thing we found was that you could travel to all six countries on a tourist visa. So that's what we decided to do. We were looking for links."

Such a quest struck me as potentially fascinating. It might be possible to learn something interesting and valuable about these rogue nations. Unfortunately, these regimes turned out to be so repressive that Anderson and his female producer had a hard time interviewing many ordinary people and were prevented from filming any politically sensitive sites.

Nevertheless, my response after viewing part one of this programme was an overwhelming sense of the pathetic. It's pathetic that the leaders of North Korea and Iraq are so insecure that they keep their citizens in ignorance of the rest of the world; it's pathetic that their citizens are so accepting of their state's propaganda and its constraints on their freedom; and it's equally pathetic that, in the case of Iraq at least, the response from the West is regular and frequent bombardment. You would think we could come up with something better than crude brute force by now.

Of course, the phrase "axis of evil" was obviously a crude simplification from the start, and I've been haunted by thoughts of it ever since I discovered that it was coined by a Canadian named David Frum.

Frum, who was employed as a speechwriter at the White House, became widely known last year as the author of that phrase, when his wife sent an email to friends boasting of her husband's accomplishment. Unfortunately for them, the email fell into the wrong hands and was published on the web. A few days later the White House announced Frum's resignation, although it claimed his departure had been planned a month previously. Once the mainstream press picked up the story it became well-known news around the world (see Proud wife turns 'axis of evil' speech into a resignation letter).

The significant point about Frum is that, like most Canadians, I knew his mother. Or at least I thought I did. Barbara Frum was a celebrity in Canada throughout the 1970s and 80s, as a result of hosting at least two ground-breaking news programmes for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). To quote from the CBC's web site titled The Life and Times of Barbara Frum:

From her CBC Radio d