links for 2009-04-02

"The Guardian's four awards came as guardian.co.uk was named website of the year for the second year in succession. Judges said it remained 'the big daddy of newspaper websites'". Just in case you missed it, it is good to know that I am still working for the newspaper website of the year.

"They led with the stomach-turning headline of ‘Blog of Courage’ and tediously droned on about what a “brave teen” I am. I’m astonished that it didn't come with a huge cut-outable photo of my smiling, pale face for housewives across the country to hold their shriekingly oversentimental candlelit vigils next to - most likely with ‘Kinross Princess’ emblazoned in massive lettering across it". The Sun plagiarises Scottish cancer blog. Nice work lads.

"A BBC spokesman said: 'The vast majority of spending directly relates to programme making. We are a global broadcaster and cannot bring events like the the Olympics from Beijing, reporting from Irag and Afghanistan, covering the US elections or bringing natural history from the Amazon by simply sitting in London.'"

"Of course, the BBC could stop people getting too energised over the amount spent on getting advertising agencies to make short films for it by - and this might be a crazy thought - using the creative people it employs and the cameras it owns to make the things". Ah, you see, they made all the marketing people redundent because it was cheaper to outsource...

Interesting blog post from the sharp end of Islamic media censorship.

Phil's take on the Slideshare 'joke' that broke one of the cardinal rules of the social web - don't mess with my attention data,

"Maybe I'm falling out of love with journalism at the moment. Perhaps when I read the morally outraged vitriol spouted about Jackie Smith's husband and his porn films in a paper owned by and advertising films and content by the same 'pornographers' who made the films he watched I wonder just where quality journalism is."

"One of the best things about the web and social media is how much great information is written and produced every single day. If you’re a regular reader of blogs, you probably come across great articles that you just want everyone to know about. But what’s the best way to share these posts?"

"Useful tools: Just because technology lets you share links across multiple platforms, doesn’t mean you should. Your professional connections on LinkedIn won’t benefit from knowing that you just listened to 'Ice Ice Baby' on Last.fm."

"and therefore calls on the Government to explore innovative solutions to preserve local journalism and to ensure that state support, either in the form of deregulatory measures or financial help, is given only where firm guarantees on investment in local journalism are secured".

"Using Twitter or Facebook at work can make you a better employee, according to a study which claims that surfing the internet for fun during office hours increases productivity". I would probably agree, but I was too busy wasting time surfing the Internet for fun to actually read the full article ;-)