links for 2010-03-09

Priceless to and fro about getting permission to link as per the terms and conditions.

"It has always fascinated me why male names dominate the readers’ letter pages in newspapers, the original home for crowdsourced comment. What’s more, it’s a trend that plays out online too: men are already significantly noisier on Google Buzz, for example, and dominate online comment in subjects like politics and media."

"A few weeks ago during a discussion here about the iPad, somebody in the comments asked me if I used AdBlock, and if not, why not.  I don't, not only for these reasons put forward by Ars Technica, because money made through advertising pays a good proportion of my wages and other reasons. It would be more than a little two-faced to want people to pay for my content with their attention and then effectively remove my attention from other peoples' sites. But I accept that it's an argument that isn't made enough by publishers - and that it may not brook much sympathy with you."

"Mr Johnson also said that he is considering measures to flag up the identities of convicted sex offenders when they log on to social networking sites like Facebook. 'There is an idea we are talking to the Americans about – when you log on, if you are a convicted sex offender, that actually there is a way of flagging that up,' he said. The Home Secretary did not explain how sex offenders could be prevented from signing up to social networking sites under false identities". Nor did he suggest that a sex offender's car, house, or phone number should be 'flagged up'

In contrast to Alan Johnson's knee-jerk populism, given the current UK media frenzy around 'justice' that looks like 'vengeance', this is a sobering piece about how to capture acts of execution, with some intelligent and thoughtful comments.

According to yesterday's Evening Standard, Alexi Sayle will be doing his first stand-up show in London for 15 years in mid-may. One can only presume he knows the date and result of the election, and can just pick up where he left off during the dying days of the Major years.

"That's not defeatism, it's realism - trying to take on broadcast rivals with limited video resources is the equivalent of trying to stop a rampaging safari park rhino with a chicken wire fence. You might get away with it for a while, but eventually it'll just trample right over you...Video online has to offer added content to be worthwhile. Replicating what users can get elsewhere's just pointless. But equally, as I've said before, doing video for the sake of video's just as pointless an exercise."

"To save £67.9m, Trinity restructured its regionals, closing or selling 30 titles last year, although Ms Bailey said it had no plans for further closures and would not be shutting down any of the 32 papers it bought from Guardian Media Group for £7.4m in cash last month". Harsh, but to be honest, in the current financial climate, if you are *not* re-examining the efficiency of *all* of your processes and tools, you are doing your readers a disservice.