Friday Reading S03E11
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology. And frequently Doctor Who. And 80’s music. And computer games and politics too. Martin is Social & New Formats Editor for the Guardian in London.
This is essential reading from Benedict Evans: “Mobile, smartphones and hindsight”
Partly an amiable ramble through some of the different mobile devices he has owned in the last fifteen years, and partly a philosophical look at how so many clever people at successful businesses could be blind-sided as to how mobile would develop the way it has.
“It’s always fun to laugh at the people who said the future would never happen. But it’s more useful to look at the people who got it almost right, but not quite enough. That’s what happened in mobile. As we look now at new emerging industries, such as VR and AR or autonomous cars, we can see many of the same issues. The big picture 20 years out is actually the easy part, but the details are the difference between Nokia and DoCoMo ruling the world and the world as it actually happened. There’s going to be a bunch of stuff that’ll happen by 2025 that we’d find just as weird.”
And this is essential reading from Gary Younge.
A moving and well argued lecture about the way that journalism chooses which stories are worth telling, and which stories get followed up…
“It is revealing that as far as anyone can make out there has not been an increase in the number of black people being killed by the US police in the last couple of years. What there has been is a growing political awareness has forced a reckoning with a reality that has existed for several years. These shootings are not news in the conventional sense. They are neither rare nor, to the communities involved, particularly surprising. They are news simply because those who make the news — us — can no longer ignore them. Because, as was the case with Trayvon Martin, facebook and twitter smelled a rat before we could. The world hasn’t changed; what’s changed is our ability to pass off the grotesque as unremarkable.”
“Sometimes Dog Bites Man Really Is the Story — And We Keep Missing it”
And this is essential reading from Emily Bell: “As publishers lose control, are newspaper websites a dead parrot?”
“The prognostication game has hitherto been about the speed at which newspapers will go out of print. Now it shifts up a gear to the more pressing question of which companies will start to jettison websites and other digital infrastructure accumulated in the past two decades. Having a legacy business configured around a website is now almost as much of a headache as the rumbling printing press, fuelled by paper and money.”
It is very interesting to think that all of the competitive advantage publishers had hoped to gain by investing heavily in a decent CMS and fast mobile website performance might be wiped out overnight by Facebook rolling out Instant Articles and Google rolling out AMP.
Talking of all that — here comes The New Day…
“[Editor Alison Phillips] said the paper would focus on in-depth articles and analysis as well as a ‘ruthless edit‘ summarising the news. Phillips added that newspapers had ‘continued to put news out for the same way for 100 years’ but hadn’t adapted to the ‘bomb’ of that the internet has represented for the UK media. Aimed at people aged 35–55, the New Day will have a presence on social media on the Twitter handle @thenewdayuk and a Facebook account but will not have a standalone website.”
“The New Day newspaper is Daily Mirror publisher’s surprising addition to the UK media” — Louise Ridley
Ahead of launch Facebook posts have included asking potential readers on where they stand over having pics of scantily clad women in the new paper and transparency over the messages that the editor is sending to journalists in the build-up to launch:
“Aspire to be the best you’ve ever been. This may turn out to be the most difficult yet most exciting thing you have ever done in your career. We are making history. So let’s all give it everything we have got and make it a history with a fantastic future.”
“Our research suggests that a small number of English-language news organizations in the U.S. and the U.K. lead the way when it comes to analytics. But market leaders and new startups across Europe are not far behind. The importance of analytics at small startups like Quartz, De Correspondent, and Ze.tt illustrates that sophisticated use of analytics is not about how many resources a newsroom has, but about how those resources are allocated.”
You can download the full report here. You really probably should.
“News brands will live or die in the future based on their ability not only to provide a service, but to connect with readers in a way which makes those readers feel like they are part of something. The i has on its side the fact that many readers have been with it since day one, so feel they have been part of something which has grown over the years.”
“The big thing newsrooms can learn from the i” — David Higgerson
“On February 18, BuzzFeed senior writer Scaachi Koul tweeted a call for longform writers, particularly those who aren’t white or male. This was a commendable step toward breaking down barriers preventing people from entering, and then overhauling, the white journalism enclave.”
And you’ll never guess what white men did next etc etc…
“They are designed to make me out as a powerful enemy of free speech who is determined to crush the expression of any idea she doesn’t agree with, and they conveniently support the perception some have created that I am not a feminist pop culture critic but rather some kind of diabolical supervillain, hell-bent on creating an oppressive society.”
“On Twitter, Conspiracy Theories, and Information Cascades” — Anita Sarkeesian
“It may all sound far-fetched. But another senior tech executive privately compares the problem of hate speech online with racism in football decades ago. There was only so much clubs could do to change crowd behaviour, and the real shift came when the Kick It Out campaign encouraged ordinary football fans to see it as their responsibility. Cracking down on antisocial behaviour from on high works best alongside changing the culture from the bottom up.”
“Play nice! How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour” — Gaby Hinsliff
A beyond brilliant evisceration of a press release explaining how buy-to-let landlords are having a hard time from Jonn Elledge
It’s the first co-production between me and Elena Cresci and of course we call this news and yes we did get paid to write it: “#TheDress one year on — eight things we learned from the viral phenomenon”
Delighted to see Abi Wilkinson getting her first Guardian byline — about Jeremy Corbyn’s image. Not sure about the chap she’s arguing with though…
“‘Things just started to unravel,’ says Warshaw. ‘It’s awesome to be credited with single-handedly bringing down a billion-dollar industry with eight kilobytes of code. But the truth is a little more complex.’”
“The man who made ‘the worst video game in history’” — Richard Hooper
I contend that they never saw anything I programmed for the ZX Spectrum
Evocative trip through Usbourne’s reissued 80s computer programming books.
“I can’t help but marvel at these hopeful, incantatory blurbs, and how close they feel to my job as narrative designer and writer. Making the coloured blobs of light mean something, sort of, for a bit. Here are the sums we can make a computer display the results of. Come up with a reason why that would be good.”
“The remembrance of things parsed” — Ed Stern
This is a gob-smackingly frank and thrillingly enjoyable interview with Bayern Munich’s Jérôme Boateng: “What You Don’t Know About: Being a Defender”
“Which brings me to another point: So much about being a defender is about what’s going on in your head, and that varies from player to player. Some guys may have a tweak, a small injury or aren’t 100 percent fit, and they are totally fine. But for me, I have to be completely focused. Like if my knee hurts, or even if there’s something going on in my own life off the pitch, then I know I’m not going to be fully there. Honestly, it’s like any other person who has a job and is sitting at their desk worrying about something else that might be going on. And that’s when things can fall apart: I make a bad tackle, I’m a little late to the ball. I’m not playing the best I can.”
I will never not love people writing about “My Immortal”
“Whatever its intent, it is a work of comic genius. I am a professional comedy writer and I sometimes get actually angry that I will never, ever write anything as funny as the bit in My Immortal where Ebony and Draco Malfoy get it on in the woods only to be intruded upon, with this:
‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!’
It was…………………………………………………….Dumbledore!”
There are some listening parties coming up for one of the best albums of all time, Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, in London, Oslo, Amsterdam and New York.
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam, covering media, technology and politics. And frequently Doctor Who and 80’s music too. Martin is Social & New Formats Editor for the Guardian in London.
