currybetdotnet Daily Mail archive
"We should have hung them when they were ten. Killing children is wrong" - Retweeting without verification
Yesterday I tweeted a comment I'd noticed on the Daily Mail website underneath an article about Jon Venables: Best ever user comment in the Mail? "We should have hung them when they were ten. Killing children is wrong" http://bit.ly/cTnFrE Whether the original comment was intentionally funny or not, my message got retweeted quite a bit, and I noticed something curious about the way it was distributed. A lot of the retweets missed off the link to the source. People echoed...
African Cup of Nations online coverage review: Part 4 - British and American online newspapers
I started this series looking at some of the British press coverage in print of the African Cup of Nations, and today I wanted to look a little bit further at online coverage in the main papers. My impression - and this is an unscientific one - is that there has been more coverage of the tournament than in previous years. I think this is in part because it allows news organisations to gear up for covering another football...
Too much David Tennant on TV? More like too many politicians if you ask me...
In response to claims that David Tennant was on BBC television too much over Christmas, a Conservative MP seems to think he appeared on over 200 channels.
What Jan Moir can teach us about handling an Internet brand crisis
What Jan Moir can teach us about handling an Internet brand crisisHow prepared are you for finding yourself in the middle of a perfect Internet storm?
Guess which Jan Moir article is missing from the Daily Mail's search results?
Funny old world, the Internet, eh? If you search the Daily Mail website today for the most recent articles by or about Jan Moir, there seems to be one missing. I wonder if you can guess which one it is? I think it must just be one of those weird coincidences that looks more suspicious than it is when your site is under intense scrutiny on the web. If you click the 'All by this author' link the notorious Stephen...
Has Jan Moir hastened reform of how the PCC handles 3rd party complaints?
Has Jan Moir hastened reform of how the PCC handles 3rd party complaints?In the face of over 21,000 complaints about Jan Moir's hateful Stephen Gately article in the Daily Mail, can the PCC really maintain their usual stance that third party complaints do not count?
Revenue share deal spikes newspaper guns about England's pay-per-view Internet World Cup qualifier
The confirmation that England's World Cup match against Ukraine will only be available pay-per-view on the Internet reminds me of 2000, when an away game against Finland was only available on short-lived and obscure pay TV service u>direct. Perform, the rights holders this time around, have made a shrewd move in allowing newspaper websites to sell the game on a revenue share basis. Whilst I'm not suggesting filthy lucre has unduly influenced editorial decisions, it is certainly a lot...
Mail homepage goes indigo - well, 'Indigo Collection' anyway
When I first saw this homepage advertising campaign last week from Marks & Spencers on the Daily Mail website, my initial reaction was to tweet that it had burned my eyes. Aesthetics aside, I did think it merited further mention. It is very interesting to see a British newspaper experimenting with advertising formats like this. For the Daily Mail's online audience it seemed likely to be totally 'on brand', perhaps much more so than the Evening Standard giving pages 2...
Does the embedded video deal lead to papers burying bad BBC news online?
The deal to share BBC video content with leading national newspapers websites, including that belonging to The Guardian where I work, moves us into some murky uncharted waters. Joanna Geary of The Times, who are not taking the video content, said that: "I’ve got this horrible feeling that the BBC deal proves that many articles produced by newspapers provide little or no uniqueness to help distinguish them in a flooded market." It is early days for the deal, but it...
Let there be humbug!
Yesterday in the Mail On Sunday was an article entitled "The Genesis enigma: How DID the Bible describe the evolution of life 3,000 years before Darwin?". The premise of the article was an outline of Professor Andrew Parker's theory that the Book of Genesis features an accurate description of how scientific evidence has chronologically ordered evolution. It includes perhaps one the most entertaining couple of paragraphs I've seen in a British newspaper in recent months. "On the third day, we...
How major publishers are using social media to drive traffic - Part 3
This is the third of a series of posts based on a talk I gave during May 2009 at WebCertain's "International Social Media Summit" in London. You can find the first part here, and view the original presentation slides on SlideShare. The social bookmarking feedback loop The ratings you get on social bookmarking sites are valuable feedback, and some major news publishers utilise them to add value to their site. The Telegraph, for example, has a 'Most Dugg' widget...
Michael Jackson's death sweeps BBC expenses from the front pages
"Michael Jackson's death spares the BBC"
What would have been on Friday's front pages.
"Dead men don't sue" - the Mail's HTML refuses to clear Air France 'terror suspects'
Earlier this week there were reports that Islamic terror suspects were amongst the passengers of Air France Flight 447. It seems that these were based solely on the names on the passenger list, and with subsequent checks it has emerged that this wasn't actually the case. The Daily Mail has altered this online story accordingly. However, if you look at your browser furniture when you visit the page, you'll note that whilst the headline of the story says one thing,...
So where DOES the Daily Mail stand on 'green' lightbulbs?
As part of your 'event swag' at the "Grand Designs Live" exhibition that I visited in early May, you got a booklet sponsored by British Gas with all sorts of tips on how you could save energy around the home. Prominent amongst them was the switch to more eco-friendly light bulbs. There was even a voucher to get some money off when you purchased some. But lo and behold - look who is the main newspaper sponsor of the booklet......
When RSS ads go bad...
One of the risks of context-driven text advertising is that occasionally there will be some uncomfortable juxtapositions of editorial content and advertising. It happens on currybetdotnet from time to time. I particularly recall Google deciding that one of my lengthy pieces about working in a record shop and collecting records suited adverts saying "Do you need help with your autistic child", which I took slightly personally. It can be even worse when the adverts are being served in an RSS...
The PCC turns a deaf ear to complaints about press coverage of Alfie Patten
As a result of my blog post last week about the Alfie Patten case, I found that another related issue cropped up regarding the PCC, and the self-regulation of the British press. I received a comment from 'Pat H', who had written to the PCC to complain about The Mirror's apparent breaching of the initial reporting restrictions. Needless to say, since she is not directly involved in the story, her complaint was, as usual, dismissed out of hand. Just like...
Can the Daily Mail and online dating really be soulmates?
Yesterday, Jemima Kiss mocked the Daily Mail's online dating service: "Single? Lonely? Bitter? Having trouble finding a life partner who hates immigrants, bleeding heart liberals, the BBC, Gordon Brown, hoodies, TV filth, feminists, Channel 4, the loony left, rip-off Britain, feral children, the French, the PC brigade, yobs, lesbians, single mothers, the Euro and Jonathan Ross quite as much as you?" It didn't take very long at all for a few comments on the article to point out that it...
Wireframing the front page: Part 3 - The Daily Mail
Earlier this week I started a series called 'Wireframing the front page'. I've been looking at different ways of comparing the printed front pages of UK newspapers with their online equivalent. In today's post I'm going to concentrate on one paper in-depth. What I've done is break up both the printed page and online 'viewport', and look at the relative percentage of space occupied by different types of content including things like the masthead, advertising, navigation, and self-promotion slots. I've...
Why the PCC is broken - a case study in trying to complain
Why the PCC is broken...
I'm not allowed by PCC rules to complain about a named 13 year old girl being called a slut in the press
Wireframing the front page: Part 1 - The "homepage"
I've been giving a lot of thought to the way that people navigate through newspaper websites, and it has made me consider the different functions that the homepage and the front page serve. Navigation, for example, is mostly redundant on the printed front page. Occasionally a paper might have something like "Turn to Page 7" to link to the continuation of a story, or a promo for the sports section, but generally the front page functions to sell one major...
A big thumbs up for the Daily Mail's comment rating system
Navigating newspapers: Part 4 - The 'red tops' and the 'middle market'
Mail Online the first national to allow you to rate the comments on their news articles?
BBC fails the online Brand damage limitation test
NOW Brand and Ross have f*&$ed up my vow not to rant about newspaper editorial...
Naked hypocrisy in the Daily Mail
The impact of duplicate content on social media success for newspapers
$num XL passengers stranded somewhere
No news is usually good news - unless it is the Chipwrapper feed
More on the Daily Mail and my comments about their 'suicidal five year olds' article
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Los Angeles 1984
Daily Mail website review for the Press Gazette
The Daily Mail site redesign: Part 5 - Sports section
The Daily Mail site redesign: Part 4 - Hovering preview
The Daily Mail site redesign: Part 3 - Story layout and download footprint
The Daily Mail site redesign: Part 2 - Message boards
The Daily Mail site redesign: Part 1 - Navigation & RSS
The Daily Mail's moral stand over 'Emo' protests
Daily Mail 'fat dog' article takes the copyright biscuit
'Sorry - this page cannot be found': How newspapers handle 404 errors - Part 1
7 things I like about the Daily Mail Beta
Wikipedia users respond to Tom Utley's criticism in the Daily Mail
Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 1 - The Daily Mail vs The Sun
Game for a laugh - Anne Diamond on games in the Daily Mail
Google hijacks traffic from newspaper site search
Who's deceiving who? The Daily Mail on Jools Holland's Hootenanny
Biblical Christian names still out-number Mohammed for Britain's boys
I'm not convinced online voting shows Rhydian was robbed on X-Factor
Trust me, the Child Benefit data loss risk to children isn't from paedophiles
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 2 - Daily Mail
The Daily Mail falls for internet myths about left-handed people
Truth isn't just a Casualty at the BBC, Richard
Alt tags reveal what is on the Daily Mail's mind about child sex offenders
'Faked' Bargain Hunt the final straw
Having the internet at Scout camps isn't just for the home-sick
A very moral gambling u-turn - Daily Mail pulls gambling site?
What tickled me in the Daily Mail this week
The Daily Mail's hypocrisy over Eastern European immigration is crinimal [sic]
Too much Big Brother nipple for the Daily Mail
Who benefits financially from the Madeleine McCann publicity juggernaut?
Daily Mail survey asseses how "Web 2.0" their readers are
Peter from Spalding is not impressed by the BBC Trust's iPlayer approval
Newspapers 2.0: How Web 2.0 is The Daily Mail?
Bob Woolmer's wife rules out / doesn't rule out* murder [Delete as applicable]
Gaza strip kidnapped by BBC Journalist according to the Daily Mail
Now the Daily Mail is twisting MY words about ChildLine
The Daily Mail distorts Childline's report on youth mental health in the UK
Paul Dacre's claim that, due to the BBC, commercial radio is "ailing"
Christmas cards and rewriting history from the Daily Mail
The Daily Mail's flip-flops over EU driving standards
The compassionate heart of Middle England
Writing headlines to whip up a frenzy of comments about kids
Exposing children in the press to protect them from online harm
ID Cards making the net a more dangerous place for kids
No Becks Please - We're The Daily Mail
London phone numbers change again, according to the Daily Mail
How The F.A. Cup lost lustre (Part XXIV)
Never over-estimate the understanding of your audience
Can you be right wing, pro-hunt AND pro-violent protest?
The enemy of my enemy is my friend?
Our boys not equipped to face Iraq's WMDs
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"Journalism in the digital age"
I'll be appearing on a panel with Sarah Hartley and Iain Hepburn at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on Sunday April 11th. More details...
Posts of the moment
Day of the Triffids
If everyone suddenly went blind, how long would the Internet survive, and could you still publish news on it?
With professionals of this quality, who needs 'citizen journalist' enemies?
It is hard to argue that ethics and quality set the 'professional journalist' apart from the amateur blogger, if the 'professional' keeps publishing articles so wrong that they have to be deleted.
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