links for 2010-07-21

Now, what strikes me as interesting here is that, in contrast to the PCC, it only took two complaints from third parties to get ASA involved in assessing the way this offer was promoted.

"I, for one, will be avoiding YouTube in case I puke up my own pelvic bone."

Ian Usher jokingly suggested to me on Twitter this article had been commissioned purely as a response to criticism of the BBC News redesign.

"Online journalism innovator Paul Bradshaw has taken voluntary redundancy from his post as course leader for the online journalism MA at Birmingham City University, in what he says was a 'complicated decision'".

"With the current revolution in technology and journalism, many journalism pundits are blindly advocating non-technical journalists learn programming and web development skills. Programming, as opposed to coding HTML or CSS, takes a considerable time commitment to learn and may or may not come natural to the average journalist. Use the flowchart below to determine whether or not learning programming/web development is the right choice for you". Great chart. As I always argue, it is a *programming mindset* that is more likely to be beneficial to the average journalist than being able to crank out "Hello, World!" scripts.

"Mixed feelings over paywall stats: maliciously pleased fewer people reading the Times; slightly despairing that no-one willing to buy news."

"I have updated my Times blog post with a new intro. This hopefully makes clear that the rest of it is utter bollocks". If only all newspaper corrections and clarifications were as frank as this...

"He has commented on Coles' blog to say:'I've just checked the daily # of visitors on the new site, and I'm pleased to say that you are *spectacularly* underestimating that number". What I'm finding entertaining is the way that when Tom Whitwell or colleagues speak in public now, it seems we are contractually obliged to say they are speaking "from beyond the paywall" as if we need to have some kind of seance for them to get through