Friday Reading S04E03
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam covering journalism, media and technology.
“Even though I am editor-in-chief of Norway’s largest newspaper, I have to realize that you are restricting my room for exercising my editorial responsibility. I think you are abusing your power.”
“Mark Zuckerberg accused of abusing power after Facebook deletes ‘napalm girl’ post”
“It’s tempting to say that comments are more trouble than they’re worth. But at a time when many news organizations are struggling to survive, improving comments is worthwhile work. They can help build community, right on our own sites, and finally get past the idea of readers as passive audiences who have to take what we dish out.”
“Everyone seems to hate online reader comments. Here’s why I treasure them” — Margaret Sullivan
I agree with the sentiment here. Well-run comments are a joy under an article, and I always try to join in the threads under my articles. Apart from anything else, they are by far the fastest way to find out what you’ve got wrong…
A little bit from Digiday about what the Guardian has learned from Chatbots. Did I mention that we have a Facebook Chatbot?
I was also interviewed by the Press Gazette about it, where I seemed to spend most of the time finding varying different phrases for “I like shiny new things” and The Drum have tried it out.
Good little profile interview with one of Facebook’s designers — Brian Lovin — who has an enviable minimal approach to his iOS home screen among other things.
When the National Trust redesigned and relaunched their website they went from over 50,000 pages to a mere 9,000. Here’s a look at the content strategy they employed to get there.
“This protest outside the UberEats office in south London on August 26 is one of the first industrial disputes to hit the city’s so-called gig economy. It is a strange clash. These are workers without a workplace, striking against a company that does not employ them. They are managed not by people but by an algorithm that communicates with them via their smartphones. And what they are rebelling against is an app update.
…
It’s hard to spread the word when you don’t even know who your colleagues are. But the couriers have an idea. They open their apps as customers and order food to be delivered to them. As UberEats couriers arrive with pizzas at the place their app has sent them, the strikers tell them about the protest and urge them to join in. Algorithmic management, meet algorithmic rebellion.”
“When your boss is an algorithm” — Sarah O’Connor
Take a moment to read this account of what it is actually like in the Calais migrant camp.
“The meeting appeared to have been organised at quite short notice and publicised largely by social media. It did not have the style of an evening gathering of the faithful in a large hall, but was simply an open-air opportunity to hear Corbyn. That he could gather so many people in the middle of a working day at the height of the holiday season is interesting in itself. The crowd included plenty of young people, with many prams and push-chairs evident. I doubt that any other politician could have attracted such a crowd at the present time, nor for many years, at least in the English midlands. The mood was positive, appreciative but not ‘over the top’. It was as far from a cult as you could imagine.”
“The Corbyn crowd, and its signal” — Paul Rogers
“It was Clegg’s spine of jelly that radicalised my politics. After his staggering capitulation to a Conservative Party hell-bent on targeting the young and the poor, my conclusion was that if we were to see real change in this country, it would not be via the careerist centre-left — who seemingly embraced progressive politics only to be the first to cave into the current economic orthodoxy.”
“Jeremy Corbyn didn’t radicalise me — Nick Clegg did” — Matthew Turner
Matt Johnson of The The is highly critical of the media — especially the BBC and the Guardian — for allowing left-wing views to be portrayed as extreme. He spoke about it after a screening of the brilliant “Infected” movie.
“‘Implicit bias is just that — implicit: We are not aware of it,’ she said. ‘We are not saying that conference organizers are bigots and purposefully discriminating; they just can’t help it.’”
“Women Scientists Turn to Data to Fight Lack of Representation on Panels” — Apoorva Mandavilli. Profile of the BiasWatchNeuro site that is tracking the male domination of speaking places in the field.
“If you can’t make an exciting photo without sexualising a woman, maybe you need to practise”
Well-crafted telling of the biggest crush at the Hajj in recent years, the death toll of which is still officially unknown. Rashid Siddiqui survived the accident that claimed members of his family.
A brilliant take-down of an exploitative story about Brian Clough’s alcoholism-fuelled decline that has been doing the rounds in papers and on social media.
From the nerd corner — somebody using a Raspberry Pi to power a vintage 80’s sound chip.
This is from 2013 but the dad-joke silliness of it really put a smile on my face. Especially the bit about the funeral: “I’ve played a game of tag for 23 years”
I really want to go to this history lecture in London — “Did Crusaders get Tattoos?”
42 Pictures That Prove Walthamstow Is The Best Place To Live In London.
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology. Martin is Social & New Formats Editor for the Guardian in London.
