links for 2009-08-24

"Being the IA in an organisation that is fundamentally and very practically committed to accessibility is for the most part an IA dream. Imagine it. A top-down drive towards machine readable content. An emphasis on the content rather than the style. A management team that understands that whizzy and award-winning is no b****y use if your users can’t use it. But occasionally IA and accessibility, if not conflict, at least exchange a couple of slightly sniffy words."

"Just like the sharks-love-Barry-White story last week, supposedly reputable sources are pumping this out as news. We understand that over summer there's less material to craft stories from. But if pieces like this have to be published, could someone at least rearrange the sentences a little, rather than copying the Press Association release word for word? Thank you". Links to offending pieces from the BBC, Yorkshire Evening Post, Telegraph and Metro amongst others

Interesting idea in collating programme-related data, or an open invitation to spam and pollute that data?

I sense a handy digital scapegoat being touted by the old media of the major studios here. Surely the question is really "Is making movies people don't enjoy killing movies?"

"My worry is that the instant I start pushing my views, everyone who disagrees with me will suddenly and forever have a tainted view of my business commentaries. Even when I discuss government or political communication, my goal is to focus on the communication, not the politics. I always hope that, even when discussing political communication, you won’t be able to guess where I stand personally."

"[E]ven better Runciman offers an compelling argument as to why the Wiki 'open edit' model to knowledge creation online works for Wikipedia and other 'pure' knowledge-based projects and not for other commercial activities. Citing the case of the Los Angeles Times and its attempt to crowd-source a column via a wiki which ended in disaster, Runciman argues that the paper's editors made two mistakes."

"Getting it wrong is a bad thing. It chips away at the reputation of not just the newspaper in question but *all* newspapers and *all* journalism." [My emphasis]

An curiously factual outsider's view of my home market.

"It’s important to find ways of introducing readers to a major news site redesign: not only do they have to come to terms with it but also be motivated to provide feedback on it. Not all sites are able to do it well or even to the reasonable sastisfaction of the thousands of readers who make use of their site day in and out. Interestingly, the Chicago Tribune, during its redesign has gone as far as using a community platform called Get Satisfaction to get things going in a really comprehensive way".

"In the London freesheet war between Rupert Murdoch and Associated Newspapers, I used to think that Associated would blink first."

With no meta description, google has to guess what to show in its results - and here's what it shows for thelondonpaper's home page - "JavaScript is used extensively by thelondonpaper to provide you with lots of fantastic features and cool gizmos across our site. We'll do our best without, ..." - Would this tempt YOU to click through?

"The Guardian today is advertising for a general manager to run the paper's proposed 'Guardian Club' which aims to create new revenue streams and build on the loyalty of the paper's print and online readership."

"Crowd-sourced" reports of the heart-breaking fires in Greece including some really interesting commentary on the domestic media reporting of the crisis and the response (or lack of) from the government.

He claims it is "the tip of the iceberg" but you can take this list as being pretty definitive if you ask me!