The email has caused another political headache for Gordon Brown

When it came to thinking up headlines to describe events at Westminster yesterday, newspaper offices up and down the land were presented with a perfect resource: the weather.

As the snow fell across much of the country, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt were causing a political sensation with their call for a secret ballot on Gordon Brown’s leadership of the party. The Independent dubbed it ‘The Winter Revolt’ on its front page, while the Guardian ran with ‘Snowstorm mutiny melts’.

Here’s two pieces from those papers that caught my eye as I sheltered myself from the cold:

The emails arrived at 10.24, and a day of political drama and intrigue began – The Independent

Geoff Hoon’s unsent letter and a secret plot to oust Gordon Brown – The Guardian

Our furry friends are having more of an impact on the environment than you may think

Dogs may be man’s best friend, but their relationship with the environment is much more frosty.

As I was leafing through the Guardian this morning this article in G2 caught my eye. Some people are beginning to argue that us pet-owners should be giving much more consideration to the ecological impact our furry friends are having. The debate has been sparked by a book called ‘Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living’ by Robert and Brenda Vale.

The article cites some quite surprising statistics that made me sit up and take note: the ecological footprint of a medium-sized British dog is greater than that of the average citizen of Vietnam. A cat has the same footprint as a Volkswagen Golf. It takes 0.84 hectares of land to keep a medium-sized dog fed. In contrast, keeping a 4.6 litre Toyota Land Cruiser running, the energy needed to build it and then drive it 10,000km every year only requires 0.41 hectares.

Despite this I cant see myself giving up Lady and Lucky (my dog and cat).

This piece in the Guardian examines the strength of al-Qaida, the perpetrator of the attacks, and concludes that while the organisation is weak – short on recruits and money – ‘simply surviving represents a victory’, in the words of one analyst.

It was a piece from Chris McGreal, examining the problems facing residents of Tusla, Oklahoma. It is the first in a series of articles recreating the route that the Joad family took in John Steinbeck’s brilliant book The Grapes of Wrath, one of my all time favourite novels.

The Joad family might have been fictional, but their plight was representative of the problems faced by many dust bowl workers during the Great Depression. Now we are facing the worst economic downturn since that era and there are some parallels – unemployment, foreclosures and a sense of despair.

McGreal will trace the journey taken by the Joad’s from Oklahoma to California along Route 66 to see if anything has changed in 70 years.

A fantastic idea that is sure to produce some great content.

But it seems as if I am of a dying breed.

With newspapers making their entire contents available for free on the internet, people of my generation will most probably boot up their Mac or PC and get their news that way. Or switch on their TV.

The market for news has become fragmented. There are just so many different ways you can get it. Over the years, newspaper circulation has been declining.

What struck me as I made my into work this week was the lack of people clutching a paid for newspaper. In the morning carriages full of people thumbed through their copy of the Metro, and in the evening it was either the London Lite or London Paper that they perused. I could literally count on one hand the number of people who were the exception to this rule.

Why do I continue to pay for my news? This article caught my eye a few days ago and advances some arguments that strike a chord with me.

To tweet or not to tweet?

That is the question facing many of today’s journalists. With increasing numbers of people keeping their followers up to date with what they are doing, hacks are starting to examine the opportunities this latest social networking craze offers.

It is a question that has also sparked a healthy debate on the Centre for Journalism (the website of my university course) a few weeks ago.

For the uninitiated the premise behind Twitter is devilishly simple: tell the world what you’re doing, in less than 140 characters.

Some argue it is simply a chance for people to post trivial updates about the mundane occurrences in their daily life. For example, Joe Bloggs could tweet that he is currently (stop the press) eating a piece of toast.

Others argue that it has its uses for journalists. I fall into this camp.

Of course it can be used for trivial nonsense that no one outside of your circle of friends will be interested in, but there are many ways journalists can utilise it to their benefit.

You could use it to quickly check the latest headlines. Media organisations are already establishing a presence on the platform. Sky News, BBC News and the Guardian all have Twitter accounts which are updated with the latest articles from their websites, with a link provided to the original piece.

A whole myriad of organisations, companies and personalities (most notably Stephen Fry) have Twitter accounts. The afore mentioned media organisations are paying attention to the opportunities Twitter offers and clearly wouldn’t be dabbling in it if they didn’t think it was of some use to them.

Although it might not be feasible for us to have one, the Twitter wall idea featured in an article from Ian’s (one of my lecturers) Delicious feed is another way the media can use Twitter to their benefit.

Since I started my course in September of last year, there have been countless examples of Twitter being put to good use.

The first picture of the plane that crashed into the Hudson river was posted on Twitter.

Sky News’ used Twitter to keep users of the channel’s website updated with the scene outside Jade Goody’s home after she died, and also during her funeral.

The channel also utilised the service to cover the G20 Protests. The length of Tweets proved perfect for quick updates on the latest developments in the protests, such as the windows of an Royal Bank of Scotland being smashed.

I first found out about the shooting of PC Steven Caroll in Northern Ireland via Twitter. I just happened to check the Twitter app on my iPhone before I went to sleep.

The death of Michael Jackson led to an absolute explosion of the amount of tweets on Twitter. The ‘trending topics’ (the most popular subjects of the tweets posted on the site) were dominated by the King of Pop.

I can also use Twitter to alert people when I post something on my blog, which is a handy way of directing more traffic to the website.

So to sum up, I think Twitter can be used by us journalists to help us do our jobs.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

The coverage of the MPs expenses scandal is an example of old and new media co-existing, according to Jon Bernstein, the former multimedia editor of Channel 4 News.

What started out as a traditional old media scoop – with the Daily Telegraph sifting through the data and revealing information in stages – has now been put into ‘the hands of the crowd’ through crowd sourcing experiments conducted by both the Telegraph and the Guardian.

And quite a few people have taken part so far:

“On Sunday the paper boasted that almost 20,000 people had taken part, helping it to scour nearly 160,000 documents. So far so great.”

Not to be outdone, the Telegraph also began its own crowd sourcing excercise:

“By the middle of the week, the Telegraph was offering its far-less redacted expenses documents in PDF form and all its data in a Google spreadsheet, while simultaneously asking readers directly: “What have you spotted?”

Bernstein concludes:

“Both papers – and the wider media come to that – have enriched our understanding of a complex and sprawling story. What started as a proprietorial scoop is now in the hands of the crowd.

“Old media and new coexisting.” ]]> http://alanmcguinness.com/mps-expenses-new-and-old-media/131/feed/ 0