Friday Reading S04E07
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam covering journalism, media and technology.
I start with a shameless plug for my own #content in order to get #numbers.
This weekend it is the fiftieth anniversary of the first time Doctor Who changed face on-screen, as William Hartnell made way for Patrick Troughton in the role. If the production team in 1966 hadn’t taken that gamble, the show wouldn’t have lasted, and my house wouldn’t be jam-packed to the rafters with Doctor Who stuff. So here’s my piece about how and why it happened.
By the way, it is possible a genie visited me when I was six and offered me a wish and I said “I’d like to write about Doctor Who for the newspapers”…
Right, onto the usual hotch-potch of stuff. I really liked this from Paul Wiltshire in defence of young journalists: “Accusing young journalists of laziness? That’s just lazy journalism”
“We know that these would-be media practitioners need to develop greater curiosity and ambition, to grow in resilience and resourcefulness as they look for stories to tell, and to keep on improving. But we are sending them out into the world with technical skills and digital instincts beyond anything I and my colleagues could have dreamed of in those lazy, hazy 1980s days.
In fact, we’d probably have gone on strike if we’d been asked to do a fraction of what the modern reporter takes in his or her stride every day.
So by all means acknowledge an industry facing intense challenges which could threaten journalism that matters.
By all means rail against the poverty of imagination of newspaper companies cutting away at the flesh of our industry.
But have the humility to accept that there may be new approaches to storytelling.
And if you’re going to tell young journalists that they’re lazy, have the guts to do it to their faces.”
In my humble opinion, the majority of young journalists I’ve worked with are smart, ambitious, work hard long hours and are seldom “off-duty”, have loads and loads of skills using technology that they have to learn themselves rather than being trained up by their employer, and they still don’t get paid enough to rent anywhere half-decent to live.
Vine is going to be wormfood. Earlier in the year the Washington Post has this piece from Caitlin Dewey suggesting it was all going a bit tits up: “Vine’s top stars are fleeing, despite the app’s best attempts to keep them”
“The shutdown of Vine, which was a much-beloved service, feels like a portent of a doomed downward spiral into irrelevance. At this point, asking for better harassment reporting seems like a fool’s errand, given that Twitter can’t even manage to figure out how to monetize and showcase a fun, hip video platform that was already popular when they bought it.”
“Twitter Is Shutting Down Vine, Because Life Is Unfair, But Mostly Because They Have No Money”— Maddy Myers
“Cosmopolitan.com talked to five prominent female writers about the online harassment they have faced during the election and how they deal with it.”
As I saw someone point out on social media, it is amazing that we talk about the problem of women being abused on social media like it is some kind of unavoidable weather system on the planet, rather than what it is: a deliberate choice by men to try and stop women speaking.
Here’s Abi Wilkinson on the same theme: “Why can’t men accept that women have opinions?”
“Something I’ve realised over several years of writing for, and frankly existing on the internet, is that some men really don’t like it when women have opinions. They consider it presumptuous, I think. Like you’re getting ideas above your station. They want to put you back in your place. With gendered slurs, sexual suggestions, threats and assessments of your f***ability, they make sure they remind you what it is to be a woman in the world as it exists.”
“Has a Black Mirror episode predicted the future of video games?” — I haven’t read this because I was trying to avoid spoilers for Black Mirror but I reckon it will probably be worth reading once I’ve watched the episode.
Excellent from James Ball on his experience being “Inside The Strange, Paranoid World Of Julian Assange” made all the better for the inclusion of the detail about the fluffy giraffe.
I am sure you, dear reader, understand all the nuances of what the hell was going on with Clinton and her email server. But let’s say you had a friend who had never read up on it, this would be a good place to recommend that your friend started.
“I had a child die, and I chose to become a father again. There can be no greater definition of stupidity or bravery; insanity or clarity; hubris or grace.”
F***ing hell, this piece: “Children Don’t Always Live”
This is fascinating on being genderqueer and bi-lingual.
“What does all that progress lead to? Here, the game is constrained by what its makers know. In ploughing their own course forward, every civilization can only arrive at the same destination, the same sequence of discoveries: the forging of Western modernity. No other routes are possible. Later versions of the game have tried to flesh out non-western “civilizations,” their special traits and units, but it remains the case that the only path that a civilization can chart into our present is a Western one. You may start off as a Viking marauder or an Aztec king or a Mongol warlord, but as you develop your civilization into the proliferating complexities of the modern era, the more it begins to resemble contemporary America.”
“Playing with History: What Sid Meier’s Video Game Empire Got Right and Wrong About ‘Civilization’” — Kanishk Tharoor
An absolutely gorgeous gallery of photos from, mostly, the sixties and seventies of the Warner Estate in Walthamstow where I grew up.
They come from an exhibition being hosted by the Vestry House museum until February.
“My plea to designers and software engineers: Ignore the fads and go back to the typographic principles of print — keep your type black, and vary weight and font instead of grayness. You’ll be making things better for people who read on smaller, dimmer screens, even if their eyes aren’t aging like mine. It may not be trendy, but it’s time to consider who is being left out by the web’s aesthetic.”
“How the Web Became Unreadable” — Kevin Marks
“They will hurt us and they will kill some of us, but they will not destroy this city and when it is done we will rebuild London, bricks and mortar, heart and soul, in memory of all those who fell so that we can stand.”
Interesting look at the Ultra-HD super-duper over-clocked framerate movie from Ang Lee that cost $40m to make and is unwatchable.
This story by Gary Bainbridge about a Pete Burns related SNAFU in the Liverpool Echo made me laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh…
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.
