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Here Comes Everybody

October 22, 2010 by Roy Johnson

how change happens when people come together

Clay Shirky’s basic argument in Here Comes Everybody is that the advent of social media (email, FaceBook, MySpace, bulletin boards, Flickr) has fundamentally changed people’s ability to form and act in groups, because it has reduced the cost of doing so effectively to nothing. This is a similar argument to Chris Anderson’s in The Long Tail and FREE: The Future of a Radical Price – that modern digital technology has created a new set of tools and zero-cost opportunities for people to do things that hitherto were the province of small, rich elites.

Here Comes EverybodyThe classic case, now well known, is that of newspapers. When individual bloggers started breaking news stories, the first thing newspapers did was to pour scorn on them. Then, as the tide of ‘citizen reporters’ grew, the newspapers started their own blogs – written by paid journalists (which is not the same thing of course). Then, when they saw advertising revenues switch from print publications to the online world, they started panicking. And that’s where they’re at now. Almost all national daily newspapers (in the UK anyway) make a loss. They are what blogger Guido Fawkes calls ‘vanity publishing’. The Guardian newspaper for instance has a daily circulation of only 280,000 copies, and operates at a loss of £171 million per year. It is subsidised by profits from Auto Trader.

A propos ‘professional’ journalists complaining that bloggers are not really ‘citizen journalists’ Shirky makes the perceptive observation that a) none of them claims to be, and b) they are something else that’s new, which the mainstream media hasn’t yet recognised.

There is very little difference between a paid journalist who blogs (such as Iain Martin for the Wall Street Journal) and Guido Fawkes (libertarian individual blogger) except that Guido is more likely to take risks in exposing political corruption and scandal fraud, whilst Iain’s column is largely amusing and well-informed comment on the same events after they have been exposed.

The other general point Shirky makes is that all technological revolutions (such as the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century) are followed not by immediate change, but by a period of uncertainty and confusion whilst the new replaces the old. At first the old continues, and the new may go unrecognised. But as soon as the new is ubiquitously adopted, it displaces the old. In the early Renaissance scribes were highly regarded practitioners of book production – but the press made them redundant within fifty years.

The same is happening now. We don’t know clearly yet what form the outcomes of fully developed social media will take, but it’s quite obvious already that they are displacing older media such as fax machines (remember those) printed newspapers, film cameras, and handwritten letters.

Shirky has a very good chapter on Wikipedia in which he explains why it is so successful, even though it is written by unpaid, self-selecting volunteers. The reason is that it has self-correction built into its system, and it appeals to people’s altruism. Anybody can add their two pennorth, and if they get something wrong somebody else will correct it – often within a matter of minutes.

There’s more to it than that of course. He produces the now familiar hockey stick graph to show that some systems (as in the Long Tail argument) are more successful because a lot of small instances can add up to more than one big one.

The most profound effects of social tools lag their invention by years, because it isn’t until they have a critical mass of adopters who take these tools for granted, that their real effects begin to appear.

The other basic philosophic argument at work here is that of difference in degree (more of the same) and difference in kind (something new).’What we are witnessing today is a difference in the degree of sharing so large it becomes a difference in kind. That sharing is coming from relatively simple but profound technological devices such as email, Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook, and other social media.’

Every stage of his argument is backed up with practical examples – from the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests organising self-support groups to thwart the Vatican, to pro-democracy campaigners in Egypt, China, and Belarus using Twitter to organise demonstrations.

He makes the excellent point that the success of open source software comes from the fact that because it is based on voluntary contributions of labour, it can afford to fail. For every Linux success story, there are thousands of OSS projects that don’t get off the ground. Commercial software developers can’t afford that degree of failure: they have to choose workable projects in order to pay their own wages.

His study is a very engaging mixture of technology, sociology, politics, and anthropology. He delivers case after case of successful group-forming, and to his credit he also analyses why many groups fail and a few succeed spectacularly. This is an engaging and vigorous polemic with thought-provoking ideas on almost every page. It ranks alongside the work of Lawrence Lessig, Chris Anderson, and Cory Doctorow as a significant gear-shift in the thinking on new technology, new media, and the social changes that are happening in online life before us right now.

Here Comes Everybody   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Here Comes Everybody   Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2010


Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, London: Penguin Books, 2009, pp.344, ISBN: 0141030623


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How to start blogging

September 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a quick guide to creating an online journal

Start blogging

A blog (short for the term ‘web log’) is a form of online diary or journal. It’s rather like having your own personal web site, but somebody else does all the technical work. All you need do is write the contents.

What do people put in their blogs? Answer: just about anything. Most are a sort of public diary where people record the events of their lives – occasionally adding a rambling commentary on the state of the world in general. Others can be a fairly serious record of professional work, with invitations for visitors to comment.

Belle de Jour claimed to be the diary of a London call girl, and was so successful it has now been snapped up by a publisher and turned into a book. The Baghdad Blogger became famous because he sent eyewitness accounts of what was happening during the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.


Start BloggingBiz Stone’s Blogging: Genius Strategies is an enthusiast’s guidance manual. He hit the blogging scene running, and has made himself an expert overnight. He now works for Blogger, which is owned by Google. Biz takes you from the very first steps of creating a blog, through to the advanced possibilities of syndicating what you write and even making money from it. He’s something of an evangelist, but all his advice is perfectly sound. Good for beginners, but he takes you all the way through to more advanced topics such as content syndication and money-making affiliate programs.

blogging   Buy the book at Amazon UK
blogging   Buy the book at Amazon US


Content

What else can go into a blog? Links to other blogs you find interesting, pictures of your pet dog, observations left behind by your visitors, even snapshots posted from your mobile phone. Here come some examples. Go to an index such as Blogdex.net which lists the most popular and the most recent blogs. Try A Message from Albia, which is a very funny satire of English social and political life purporting to come from a mythical European country. BoingBoing.net is a very popular ragbag of entries, which when I just checked included an item on the youngest video blogger. Even newspapers such as The Guardian have their own blogs.

Blogging began as a medium for Web-based personal diaries, and most people still use it for this purpose. But some bloggers have started to develop the medium for what is essentially self-publishing. They might post notes reflecting briefly on a topic or discuss it with other bloggers, but they also upload essays, articles, or opinion pieces which count as serious pieces of journalism, expressing ideas and points of view which might not be available elsewhere.

It’s a fairly simple process to keep a blog going – once you’ve got it set up. The procedures for signing up and creating a blog are fairly similar in each case. Basically, you subscribe to a blogging service; you set up your blog, choosing from a number of ready-made templates; then you start posting what you have to say.

There’s no point spelling out the procedures in detail here, because online tutorials such as the excellent BlogBasics.com already exist. Read through their suggestions, print out the pages if you wish, then go to Blogger and get started immediately. What I’ll give you here are some general tips, additional support resources, and how to make money from your blog.


Essential BloggingCory Doctorow’s Essential Blogging takes you through all the options of free blogging or paying a small fee to get extra features and more control. It covers all the essentials you might need, and it’s presented in publisher O’Reilly’s impeccably high-standard style. Doctorow is a young guy who has made a big impact in the world of online writing, and he’s now an editor-in-chief at Boing-Boing as well as a successful writer of science fiction. Up to date.

blogging   Buy the book at Amazon UK
blogging   Buy the book at Amazon US


Procedure

Plan first — Before you start, think of a name for your blog, and decide what you are going to write about. It can follow a theme or a topic; it might be all about your home town or your favourite sports team; it could be a record of your trip around the world. I’ve just discovered that a lot of journalists have personal blogs where they record the gossip they leave out of their official reports. It doesn’t even have to be true: a blog is the perfect medium for an online soap opera.

Sign up — When you have decided on a name and a theme, you need to sign up for an account. These come in two flavours – free and subscription. Blogger.com is the most popular, because it’s free; but some people prefer MoveableType or DiaryLand because they offer additional features for a small charge. WordPress.com offers both a free and a commercial version.

Blog commerce — How can you make an income from all this? Well, it’s unlikely that you can do so directly. But there are all sorts of small possible spin-offs. Lots of bloggers sign up as affiliates at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com and other commercial sites. You place advertising for Amazon on your blog, any they send you a (modest) residual income for sending customers through to their site to buy books, CDs, and software.

There’s also the possibility of micro-payments. This is a system in which people are prepared to pay a small amount for downloading an article of interest. There’s still some resistance to this idea, but it’s now fairly common in downloading music files – so it might catch on.

The most lucrative source of revenue for many blogs and web sites is the Google Adsense scheme. In exchange for letting Google put advertising on your blog or your web pages, they offer you micropayments each time your visitors click through to the advertiser.


The Weblog HandbookRebecca Blood’s The Weblog Handbook is a guide to creating your own blog. It’s a book for anyone who has ever thought about starting but isn’t sure how to post, where to find links, or even where to go to register. She certainly knows what she’s talking about, as you can see at her own blog rebecca’s pocket. She guides you through the whole process of starting and maintaining a blog and answers any questions that might pop up along the way, such as the elements of good blog design and how to find free hosting. She’s gone on to be a very successful professional blogger.

blogging   Buy the book at Amazon UK
blogging   Buy the book at Amazon US


Advertising

The Google Ads scheme has three big advantages. First, the visitors don’t have to buy anything: you get paid simply for their viewing the ad. Second, the whole thing works automatically. Once the code is in your pages, Google start paying money straight into your bank. Third, Google provide all the scripts and coding, and you can even customise the ads so that they blend into the design of your blog.

One of the cleverest features of Google’s scheme is that the ads are matched to the content of the pages on which they appear. So, if your blog is about music or fashion, the ads will be for CDs and iPod downloads, clothing and online stores. Whatever you write about, the ads will be on the same subject. This is good for Google and good for you, because readers are more likely to click through.

Companies such as Blogger have done everything they can to make the process of setting up a blog as easy as possible. It’s possible to set one up from scratch in just a few minutes. And yet everyone I know – including experienced users – has had some sort of minor problem in doing so. And that includes me.

If you get stuck there are FAQs to answer the most basic queries (“My blog has disappeared. Where has it gone?”). I found these very helpful when setting up my blog because they are full of genuine questions from beginners and answers from more experienced bloggers.


Blogging for Dummies Brad Hill’s advice in Blogging for Dummies is aimed at getting you up and running as quickly as possible – though he begins with what blogs are – and what they are not. He explains the different types of blogs, and how and why they are different from web sites. The good thing is that he looks at all the options and draws up comparison charts which show the features, cost, and options offered by the various providers and software programs. This includes popular features such as the ability to display adverts and upload photos.

blogging   Buy the book at Amazon UK
blogging   Buy the book at Amazon US


GLOSSARY

Blog (noun) – a journal or diary that is on the Internet – Andrew Sullivan has the most popular blog on the Internet.

Blogger (noun) – a person who keeps a blog – Bloggers are revolutionizing the way news is shared.

Blog (verb) – to write a blog – I am going to blog before breakfast this morning.

Blogging (verb) – the action of writing a blog – Blogging is my way of sharing my passions with the world.

Post (verb) – to write and despatch an individual entry on a blog – I will be posting on this issue tomorrow.

Post (noun) – an individual entry on a blog – In yesterday’s post you mentioned that …

© Roy Johnson 2004


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How to write a newsletter

November 28, 2010 by Roy Johnson

guidelines for effective communication skills

newsletterA newsletter is designed to keep people up to date with events and activities.

It can be issued as a printed document, an email message, or even a blog posting.

Some online companies issue a newsletter every few days, whereas big organisations might issue only two a year.

Some newsletters are just a humble sheet of A4 printed on both sides: others may be multi-page glossy brochures.

A newsletter is a vehicle for spreading information to members of a group, and can also contain amusement and entertainment.

How to be an editor

Your number one task is to gather interesting and relevant news and information, then make it available to your readers.

The biggest part of that task (unless you are very lucky) is likely to be gathering enough information to fill each issue.

The simplest way to do that is to add each news item as it comes in. This saves you the trouble of relocating it again later. Keep a file (paper or electronic) with a copy of each item for the next issue.

Make a note of any important details attached to the news item – such as times, dates, URLs, prices, contact addresses.

Don’t leave all the information gathering until just before a newsletter issue goes out, otherwise you will put yourself under a lot of pressure

Readership

An in-house newsletter for a large business has the advantage of a stable and known readership. But this presents you with the difficulty of coming up with newsworthy stories from one source.

This type of newsletter also has the double-edged characteristic of being driven by company policy.

A newsletter that is aimed at a wide readership has the disadvantage of a largely unknown audience. But by way of compensation, you can take more risks in selecting the content.

Asking for contributions

Lighten the burden of writing a newsletter by inviting contributions from your readers.

People are often willing to write a short article, particularly if it is drawing attention to an event they wish to publicise

Invite readers to notify you of product launches, forthcoming events, or novelties which might interest your readers.

It is quite common to attract such contributions by offering prizes or free gifts in return.

House style

It’s very useful to establish a house style, then stick to it. Choose colours, images, font types, vocabulary, and layout to create your house style.

Tailor your style to reflect your organisation or line of business. This means that your readers will know what to expect.

It also means that any potential contributors know how to present their work.

Editing tips

Every editor’s nightmare is to publish a newsletter then suddenly realise that it contains a silly mistake – a mis-typed phone number, the wrong date for an event, or a URL that doesn’t work.

For this reason, rigorous editing and proof-reading is required before every publication date. Here are some antidotes that work

  • edit and proof-read your newsletter rigorously before every publication
  • check all factual details, but in addition check your spelling and grammar
  • ask someone else to check the text before you send it off
  • don’t try to edit for several features of the writing at the same time

Read through the text several times with only one of these issues in mind:

  • spelling
  • syntax
  • grammar
  • numbers
  • names
  • dates
  • URLs
How to present the content

If you want people to read a newsletter, it’s got to be interesting – to the readers. Pack your newsletter with items that are fresh and newsworthy.

Grab your readers’ attention in the first sentence of any item.

You can make any collection of news more attractive by adding smaller items of entertainment.

Take a tip from newspapers. Almost all of them have crosswords, cartoons, pictures, recipes, and horoscopes scattered amongst their main items.

Add a selection of not-directly-related news items. Remember that –

  • scientists also practice the arts
  • housewives follow current affairs
  • politicians enjoy sports

Here are some tips on regular stand-by extras that can help give your newsletter variety:

  • a quiz
  • an advice column
  • seasonal recipes
  • personal profiles
  • questions and answers
  • how-to articles
  • top 10 lists
  • votes and polls
Legal issues

Even if your newsletter is a small-scale affair, you should take care not to leave yourself open to legal prosecution. Be careful not to libel or defame people – which means making sure that everything you say is true.

Tread carefully with your content: you might be amazed at how easily some people take offence..

On a large-scale circulation newsletter keep in mind that there may be subscribers with views and beliefs quite unlike your own.

Unless you wish to be daring or radical, treat sensitive issues such as religion, politics, and ethical beliefs with care.

[I once printed some of George W. Bush’s famous ungrammatical statements during his illegal invasion of Iraq. Even though they were all things he had actually said, I was heavily criticised by patriotic Americans. I refused to retract the quotations, but lost a lot of subscribers. So decide which is more important – your circulation figures or your political commitment.]

Advertising

If you reach a big enough audience, you may be able to attract paid advertising.

Knowing how much to charge is the biggest problem – especially if you are starting from scratch.

Try to find out how much newsletters like yours charge for both small insertions or paid features (advertorials).

Don’t be greedy. A smaller but regular income will be more useful than a larger but one-off payment.

Make a clear distinction between any advertising and your own content. Readers will be annoyed if they feel they have been duped into reading what turns out to be an advert.

Evading spam filters

If your newsletter is an email message or an HTML attachment, spam filters on the reader’s server will block messages containing certain words.

They are obviously on the lookout for obscene words. But that’s not all. They are checking for the tell-tale signs of get-rich-quick offers, ponzi schemes, and the Nigerian letter scam.

These are some of the hallmarks of spam message that you can easily avoid:

  • titles in all capital letters
  • over-use of exclamation marks
  • satisfaction guaranteed
  • lose weight – cash bonus

Even the simplest and most innocent-looking words can become spam alerts if viewed in a certain way. The easiest was round this problem is to insert characters in such a way that the words are still legible – f.r.e.e   k.n.i.c.k.e.r.s   to cover your   b.o.t.t.o.m.

What to avoid

I receive two dreadful newsletters every quarter – one from my local council, and the other from a university. They both display just about every feature of a useless newsletter publication.

  • all articles heavily self-conratulatory
  • small issues blown out of proportion
  • celebrity profiles – of nonentities
  • financial news with no critical analysis
  • no invitation for reader feedback
  • all negative news omitted

Both of these organisations (at the time of writing) are suffering enormous cuts in government funding, and making huge numbers of staff redundant. These is no mention of this in either publication.

The net result of their phoney optimism and lack of honesty is to debase the value of any serious news they report. Few people read these newsletters. They go straight into the bin.

Email newsletters

Format the newsletter so that it can easily be read on screen. Use narrow columns and plenty of white space between each item of news.

Use shorter sentences than you would for printed materials. Long sentences are particularly difficult to read on screen

Use clear headings for each topic. This gives readers a chance to scan the newsletter for topics which interest them.

Avoid the use of continuous capitals for emphasis. This decreases the chance of being trapped by spam filters.

Always make it quite clear how readers can unsubscribe. Nobody wants to feel trapped. Keep in mind this good joke from Dick Vosburgh: “I haven’t been so happy since the day that Reader’s Digest lost my address”.

Offer a list of topics to be covered in the next isue. This gives reader’s an incentive to keep reading.

Template

Title

——– MANTEX NEWSLETTER ——–

Create a title for your newsletter – then stick to it.

Issue number

Number 165 – December 2010 – ISSN 1470-1863

The ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) is an identification number for serial publications and other continuing resources in the electronic and print world.

The number is issued by the national library of any country, and is free of charge.

Sub-title

Arts, Culture, and Technology as seen from
the digital hub of Media city Manchester UK

This is a brief explanation of the topics covered by the newsletter, and a hint at its general approach.

Advertising

** 13,000+ subscribers will see your AD **

This is an internal announcement, letting potential adveritisers see where their advert would appear.

News item One

0— ‘Here Comes Everybody’

Here Comes Everybody

This is without doubt my outstanding reading experience
of the last few weeks. Clay Shirky is what some people
are now calling a ‘futurologist’.

He analyses the latest developments in computer technology
and uncovers new shifts in social and economic forces.

His prime target is the newspaper industry, which used to
have what seemed like a monopoly on the distribution of
information about current events.

That has now been completely undermined by something as
apparently innocuous as personal blogs.

He also shows *why* Wikipedia has become the greatest
encyclopedia the world has ever seen – even though nobody
gets paid for writing it.

His study is a very engaging mixture of technology, sociology,
politics, and anthropology. Full review here –

This is the lead article – the news item to which you attach most importance, and which you think might be most interesting to your readers.

Make the clickable links as clear as possible. They can be shortened if necessary using services such as TinyURL.com and Bit.ly

Entertainment item one

0— Pub Quiz Question #1

What part of the body suffers from glaucoma?

Quizzes are a popular way to add variety. You could also try jokes, odd facts, today in history, famous birthdays, or handy household tips.

News item Two

0— Language Skills

http://mantex.blogspot.com/2010/10/language-skills.html

This is an amusing YouTube video of a young kid
speaking English in 24 different accents.

Warning! It’s not safe for work (NSFW) or for
showing your maiden aunt.

What’s even more remarkable is the fact that
he nails so many UK dialects – which as all
good linguists know is not the same thing as
regional accent.

http://mantex.blogspot.com/2010/10/language-skills.html

This is a lighter news item with a link to a YouTube video clip. Keep in mind that these are sometimes removed and may become copyrighted.

Formalities

Copyright (c) 2010, MANTEX
All Rights Reserved

PO Box 100
Manchester
M20 6GZ UK

Tel +44 0161 432 5811
www.mantex.co.uk

This is a formal declaration, claiming copyright and stating a business address.

Promotion

If you like this newsletter, PLEASE
FORWARD IT to friends and colleagues.
subscribers should register at the
following address —

https://mantex.co.uk/

BACK ISSUES featuring news items,
reviews, and product details at –

https://mantex.co.uk/articles/news/

Please retain the copyright and
list-joining information. It may be
posted, in its entirety or partially,
to newsgroups or mailing lists, so
long as the copyright and list-joining
information remains.

This encourages your subscribers to create new subscribers by forwarding the newsetter to their friends. It’s free promotion.

Interaction with readers

If you have any requests, observations,
or items you would like to be included
in our next issues, just mail us at —

news@mantex.co.uk

Unsubscribe instructions

You receive the MANTEX newsletter
because you subscribed to it. If you
wish to leave the list, send a message to

unsubscribe@mantex.co.uk

It is important and respectful to your subscribers to know that they can unsubscribe at any time.

Always respect their wishes. Some people subscribe by mistake; others change email address.

And incidentally, you should never sell or pass on your subscription lists to advertisers. This would be sure to annoy subscribers; they would lose faith in your integrity; and they would certainly unsubscribe – in large numbers.

Tailpiece

News-165-December-2010
ISSN 1470-1863
The British Library

This isn’t strictly necessary, but it forms a neat reminder of the status of the publication.

© Roy Johnson 2010


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How to write a web page

November 23, 2010 by Roy Johnson

creating effective text for on-screen reading

Web PageIn order the communicate effectively on the Internet, you need to know how to write a web page that is successful.

Web pages are available for the whole world to see – but you will no doubt have an audience in mind.

Your audience is the people you hope to be addressing. They might be – fellow hobbyists, opinion makers, customers for products, or fan club members.

So – you have your own target audience, but anybody else can read your pages. There is therefor another audience about which you can know nothing (in advance).

If you want to reach as many people as possible, keep this invisible audience in mind. Write in a clear and simple manner. Avoid jargon and complicated expressions.

Layout

A web page is not the same thing as printed document. It might look similar, but it does different things. Your writing needs to be grammatically correct and free from mistakes. But it will not be read in the same way as a book or even a magazine.

People scan a web page before they read it. They glance at the overall content first. They read headings and sub-headings, glance at pictures, and even look for links.

Reading text on a screen is much harder than reading it on a printed page. This means that your writing needs to be different in style.

Your objectives

The function of a web page will depend upon your objectives. The page could be designed to offer a number of things:

  • news
  • information
  • entertainment
  • instruction
  • advice

This will have an effect on the way you deliver the content. But no matter what the function, there are certain golden rules that will help to make any web page effective.

Style

All your writing should be split up into small chunks. Huge blocks of writing on a screen are very difficult to read. The short paragraph is an important part of writing for the Web. This allows readers to grasp what you have to say more quickly.

Have a look at online newspapers. They use short and even one-sentence paragraphs.

Employ as many devices as possible to break up dense blocks of writing. Use headings, sub-headings, bold, and italics. Add graphics where appropriate and use bulleted lists.

Short sentences are easier to read than long ones. This is true on paper, but even more so when writing for the screen. Put a limit of twenty words per sentence on your writing – and watch its effectiveness improve!

The most effective way to communicate with general readers is to write directly in a simple, friendly manner.

Don’t forget that only a small part of a long web page will appear in the monitor screen at any one time. In such cases it’s important that you offer readers clear signals to find their way around.

Vocabulary

The language you use will be conditioned by your subject and the audience you are trying to reach (as well as the extent of your own vocabulary).

If you have a specialist subject and audience (agricultural biology, jet engine design) you will naturally be using the specialist language of your subject (jargon). But if you wish to reach a wide and general public, it’s better to keep you language plain and simple.

There’s no point in using a term such as aerated beverages when fizzy drinks will be understood just as well.

Conventions

It’s not necessary to know HTML coding to write a web page. Most software will do this for you. But a little knowledge will help you control the appearance of the page.

Use the text editing menus that appear in Microsoft Word and the page creation panels of most blogging software (Blogger, WordPress). These will give you the option to put text in bold, italics, and even colour.

A screen of text with different fonts, colours, and emphasis splattered all over the page looks bad. The golden rule here is this – Less is more. Restraint will help you achieve a more impressive appearance.

  • Headings in bold and a larger font size
  • Sub-headings in bold
  • Italics for emphasis and foreign words
  • No use of underlining at all

Underlining makes text hard to read, and the underlining can be confused with a hyperlink.

Examples

You are looking at an example of a web page right now. This type of page is called a ‘How to’ in the language of Web commerce. That is, it offers simple guidance notes on a single topic. Here are three more very different types of page.

Historical document
The first is from the nineteenth century. None of the above guidance notes apply, because readers want the document in a form that is as similar as possible to the original.

Red button Henry James on ‘The Art of Fiction’

Essay
The second is to a short illustrated essay on an artistic movement. This is the sort of article that might normal occupy a few pages in a magazine or a weekend newspaper supplement. It has graphics, links to related subject, and it also contains advertising.

Red button The Omega Workshops

Newspaper
The third is the online version of a daily newspaper. Notice how this page is made up of very short extracts, with links to the full articles, which are located on separate pages. The front page is packed with links, graphics, and advertising. It is also composed ‘dynamically’ – which means that it is updated every few minutes with new content.

Red button The Guardian

© Roy Johnson 2010


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Information Age Journalism

June 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

contemporary journalism in an international context

This is a book which looks at the state of journalism (newspaper, radio, and TV) in the context of globalisation of media control and the Internet age of instant communication. Vincent Campbell starts with a look at the decline in newspaper circulation – a more-or-less universal phenomenon. The dangers he sees are the monopolisation of ownership, tabloidization, and the onset of the Internet which has thrown everything into a state of uncertainty.

Information Age JournalismHe looks at the relationship between journalism and the state, arguing that whilst most people in liberal democracies want the removal of state controls, when they are replaced by the demands of the free market they do not diminish but simply change their form. This leads to a detailed examination of the concept of ‘press freedom’, with examples drawn from all over the world – only forty percent of which is ‘free’. He covers newspaper ownership, the role of advertising, and he also deals with the ethical questions surrounding the manner in which journalists gather information – their relationship with sources, and where news management ends and spin begins.

He includes a detailed analysis of the workings of a typical newsroom. This includes how news stories are discovered, selected, written, edited, then presented.

There’s a comprehensive discussion of all the ethical dilemmas commonly raised in journalism – invasion of privacy, naming and shaming, chequebook journalism, libel, blasphemy, and protecting your sources – as the editor of the Guardian, Peter Preston, spinelessly failed to do after printing Sarah Tisdall’s whistle-blowing revelations.

This leads logically enough into a consideration of objectivity, opinion, bias, and slant. Most of his arguments are illustrated by examples drawn from recent high profile cases from the print press and TV which most people will remember.

He then looks at various alternatives to conventional journalism – where one might expect to hear more radical views. These range from political satire, as in The Onion and Private Eye to literary journalists of the Tom Woolfe school.

Although it certainly makes his coverage comprehensive, I was surprised that he gave so much space to (so-called) reality TV such as Big Brother, sports journalism, confessional television chat shows, and the amazingly vacuous Cosmopolitan, which he categorises as ‘lifestyle journalism’.

The result of this is that the coverage of Internet journalism is squashed into a few brief pages right at the end of the book. No mention of blogging at all – which is strange after two hundred pages in search of something new and radical.

It’s a book which could do with a few more pictures to break up page after page of dense text. But it’s suitable for anyone who wants to make an in-depth study of journalism, particularly in an international context, or in its relationship to politics and the current ownership of mass media companies.

© Roy Johnson 2005

Information Age Journalism   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Vincent Campbell, Information Age Journalism, London: Arnold, 2004, pp.306, ISBN: 0340763493


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iPhone UK: The Missing Manual

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the book that should have been in the box

If you buy an iPhone, the one thing you don’t get is a manual telling you how it works. Oh sure – you can download a PDF file from a web site , but as David Pogue, author of this excellent guide observes, “it’s largely free of details, hacks, workarounds, tutorials, humour, and any acknowledgement of the iPhone’s flaws. You can’t mark your place, underline, or read it in the bathroom.” As most people know by now, the iPhone has completely transformed handheld mobile devices. It combines everything you need in portable computing – email, Internet access, photo and audio-visual storage, address-book, MP3 player, GPS device (maps) stock exchange figures, and games. It’s the ultimate all-in-one portable device. I’ve bought two of these shirt-pocket miracles in the last few weeks – and the first thing I wanted after opening the box was a manual.

iPhone UK: The Missing ManualIt’s true, they’re very easy to use, but I still needed help with some of the basics. The main learning curve with the iPhone is the nested menu system – and that’s clearly explained here. Basically, you’ve just got to drill down from one screen to another to find your stuff. But the manual is well illustrated with photos and screenshots, so that you know exactly what you should be looking at.

One feature of the iPhone that has made them best-sellers is the navigation system. It’s all done by touching, tapping, and sliding your finger across the screen. In case you didn’t know, apart from the on/off switch and the volume control, there’s only one button on the iPhone, and you actually don’t need that very much. Everything is done with one finger touching the screen.

iphoneAnd nothing can go drastically wrong, so you don’t need to worry. It’s no wonder that these devices have become popular so quickly. Quite apart from the ultra-cool design, you can download games, extras, and software novelties with no trouble at all. Many of them are completely free or amazingly cheap. For instance, the ‘Brushes’ graphic design program used to produce these stunning pictures costs only £2.99. At this price you can afford to give things a try – and it’s no tragedy if you decide not to bother.

The manual covers all aspects of the phone, and it also gives you a full guide to iTunes – the site from which Apple hopes you will download most of your music files. They currently sell for around £0.79 per track – but companies such as Amazon are currently undercutting them at £0.49 per track in an effort to capture the market.

The iPhone is of course a miracle of mobile phone technology: you can have all sorts of options – from visual voice mail to chat programs and free texting. Of course, out of the box, you are tied in to the O2 network service, but if you feel up to the challenge, you can get round this by ‘jailbreaking’ the phone. That will allow you to change ringtones and wallpaper, as well as choose your own mobile network. Details of how to do it are available here

There are two other things I like about the Missing Manuals. One is that they are not slavishly uncritical. If there’s a shortcoming with the product, they’ll mention it. And two – they’ll show you how to get round the problem. There are call-out boxes packed with hints, tips, and hidden workarounds.

You can also download movies, audio books, games, podcasts, TV programmes. You can even couple up your iPhone to your TV and watch videos on a full size screen. That’s why these slender hand-held computers are now regarded as something of a Killer Ap – because they have the capacity to combine all online services into one user-friendly, affordable device.

But what about all the free programs and software mentioned in the book? They’ve thought of that too. The book has its own web site where the latest versions of shareware and freeware are listed.

© Roy Johnson 2009

iPhone UK   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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David Pogue, iPhone UK: The Missing Manual, O’Reilly UK, 3rd edition, 2009, pp.416, ISBN: 0955750628


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iPod: The Missing Manual

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the book that  should have been in the box

I bought an iPod recently for playing MP3 music files – and I was amazed to discover that it does a lot more than that. The iPod is simply an iPhone without the phone – and this means a lot more than you might imagine. It plays music, sure enough, but it’s also got a wireless card, and that means you can surf the Web, get your emails, watch videos on YouTube, check the weather or the state of your stock market investments – and all this from a device you can comfortably keep in your top pocket.

iPod: The Missing ManualIt has all these features – and yet it doesn’t come with a guidance manual. You can download a PDF from the iTunes site, but reading manuals on screen is no joke – and the chances are that you’ll miss some of the amazing features on this device which is in the process of revolutionising our connections with the online world. In the last year alone, more than 20,000 small applications (Apps) have been written for the iPod and iPhone – and these are so accessible and so cheap, they are driving down the price of software everywhere.

I like the approach of the missing manual series, because they’re written with users’ needs in mind. For instance, the first thing anyone buying an iPod probably wants to know is – how can I get music onto this thing and start listening? And that’s exactly what comes up first in the manual – how to download tracks from iTunes, how to import a CD, and how to organise the music to suit your own needs.

The main learning curve with the iPod is the nested menu system – and that’s fairly clearly explained. Basically, you’ve just got to drill down from one screen to another to find your stuff. But the manual is well illustrated with photos and screenshots, so that you know exactly what you should be looking at.

iPod_touchAnd nothing can go drastically wrong, so you don’t need to worry. It’s no wonder that these devices have become so popular so quickly. Quite apart from the ultra-cool design, you can download games, extras, and software novelties with no trouble at all. Many of them are completely free or amazingly cheap. For instance, the ‘Brushes’ graphic design program used to produce these stunning pictures costs only £2.99. At this price you can afford to give things a try – and it’s no tragedy if you decide not to bother.

The manual covers the iPod Touch, the Classic, the Shuffle, and the Nano, and it also gives you a full guide to iTunes – the site from which Apple hopes you will download most of your music files. They currently sell for around £0.79 per track – but companies such as Amazon are currently undercutting them at £0.49 per track in an effort to capture the market.

There are two other things I like about the Missing Manuals. One is that they are not slavishly uncritical. If there’s a shortcoming with the product, they’ll mention it. And two – they’ll show you how to get round the problem. There are call-out boxes packed with hints, tips, and hidden workarounds. I discovered a really useful feature for anybody using an iPod whilst on the move: you can locate the nearest free WiFi hot spot simply by finding your location on Google Maps, then doing a search on WiFi.

You can also download movies, audio books, games, podcasts, TV programmes. You can even couple up your iPod to your TV and watch videos on a full size screen. That’s why these slender hand-held computers are now regarded as something of a Killer Ap – because they have the capacity to combine all online services into one user-friendly, affordable device.

© Roy Johnson 2010

iPod   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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David Pogue, iPod: The Missing Manual, Sebastopol: O’Reilly, 2010, pp.304, ISBN: 1449390471


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Journalism – A Short Introduction

June 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Reporting for press, broadcast media, and the Net

Ian Hargreaves has worked in newspaper journalism, magazines, television and radio. He was director of news and current affairs at the BBC, deputy editor of the Financial Times, and editor of the Independent and the New Statesman. This breadth and depth of experience gives him a very well informed overview of contemporary journalism in print and broadcast forms.

Journalism - A Short IntroductionHe starts by sketching in a brief history of free speech and the press – Milton, Thomas Paine, J.S. Mill – then argues that newspapers had only just finished establishing themselves as the prime vehicles for circulating news in the early years of the last century when they were immediately challenged by new technological inventions. First the radio, then television, and most recently the Internet. This is an exposition conducted at a fairly high socio-political level.

He compares recent journalism in Russia and the USA for instance – both cases where freedom of expression is being compromised, even if for very different reasons. One possible solution he sees is a return to what he calls ‘civic journalism’ – of the kind discussed by Dan Gillmor in his recent book We the Media. Digital communication in the form of email, bulletin boards, blogs, RSS feeds, and web sites puts the power of communication and free speech back into the hands of individuals. We no longer need to own printing presses to circulate information.

He is certainly smack up to date – tracking the politicking and manoeuvring that goes on between governments, regulatory bodies, and media tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner and their like. He also includes the Hutton report in the context of reporting during a war, which always puts ‘standards’ and the ethics of truth-telling to a severe test.

There’s an interesting chapter on tabloid journalism in which he easily exposes the excesses of The Sun and The National Enquirer – but he also argues that the concentration on ‘celebrity’ has had an injurious knock-on effect on serious media.

There’s also a chapter on press ownership where he argues that despite the Murdochs, Blacks, and Maxwells, the real power in press ownership is passing into the hands of business conglomerates. This is likely to be depressing news for those who believe in a ‘free press’. He also offers some gritty examples from his first hand experience of the relations between owners, editors, and journalists.

There’s a historical view of public relations and spin-doctoring which is more interesting than you might think – though the overall impression it gave me was that all journalists ought to keep in mind the mantra of Harold Evans who suggested that all journalists interviewing politicians ought to ask themselves “Why is this bastard lying to me?” He also includes an interesting chapter on the ethics of journalism – with a healthy critique of the toothless UK Press Complaints Committee.

He ends, logically enough, with the influence of the Internet, which has spawned all sorts of challenges to conventional media. He uses the example of Matt Drudge’s exposure of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal as a touchstone case, reminding us that Drudge was just an individual citizen, not a paid journalist. Digital information technology is changing so quickly, it’s difficult to know what will last or what will happen next – but he outlines all the important issues.

I found this a much more interesting and stimulating book than its modest title led me to expect. If you want to know what’s happening in journalism right now, it will bring you right up to date.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Ian Hargreaves, Journalism: a very short introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN: 0192806564


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Literacy in the New Media Age

July 2, 2009 by Roy Johnson

theoretical study of writing in the digital age

This is an investigation of the effect of new media on what Gunter Kress calls ‘alphabetic writing’. He is arguing that multimedia and the screen are starting to challenge the page as the natural medium of writing – and that this in turn is affecting the way we write. It’s certainly true that writing for the screen has to be more immediate and heavily chunked than writing for the page, and Kress also argues that the screen is making graphic images more important as a medium of communication.

Literacy in the New Media Age He points out quite rightly that speech and writing are two completely separate systems (which is why many people have problems with writing). The alphabet is actually a loose transcription system for translating between them. His basic argument is that all communication (including linguistics) should be seen as a subset of semiotics. There’s actually not very much about new media discussed – merely an assumption that iconic or visual communication is challenging the dominance of writing.

However, he does make the interesting observation that computers put users in charge of page layout in a way which gives new emphasis to design, as well as providing interactivity between writer and reader.

Having argued that all texts are a result of ideological relationships between author and reader, he even attempts a quasi-political analysis of punctuation. This is not really persuasive, and founders in his attempts to explain or excuse his examples of what is no more than poor writing.

But he does end on an interesting topic of reading paths. That is, the manner in which readers have to construct their own navigational routes when confronting what he calls ‘multimodal’ texts – ones with pictures and words, such as magazines and web pages, for instance.

Although he claims to have left behind an academic style so as to communicate with a wider audience, he writes in a dense and rather abstract manner. The results will be of interest to linguists, educational theorists, and semiologists – though those approaching it with an interest in new media might be a little disappointed.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Gunther Kress, Literacy in the New Media Age, London: Routledge, 2003, pp.186, ISBN: 041525356X


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Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness

July 3, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record

Norman Lebrecht is a writer and pundit specialising in classical music who often appears on Radio 3 taking phone-in commentaries on what the BBC supposes to be very controversial topics such as “Should government subsidise the Arts?” and “Is the Internet taking over from print journalism?”. He comes across in the spoken word as a pushy and self-aggrandising windbag, but I must say that in Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness the same approach makes for lively reading.

Maestros, Masterpieces and MadnessWhat he offers here is a history of recording classical music, from its faltering start at the beginning of the last century, to the present. His main argument is that what was at first perceived as a somewhat impure medium gradually took hold of the public imagination when the technology became affordable in the form of the LP record and then the CD. This led to an explosion of recording the classics which was fuelled by vainglorious recording companies and famous conductors alike. This accelerated until the whole system ground to a point of collapse brought on by their greed, by over-production, and a failure to see changes in mass media.

That’s the story in a nutshell, but it is told via a combination of detailed insider knowledge of how classical music works as a business, with celebrity vignettes, potted biographies, and what might be called lashings of The Higher Gossip.

Many of the principal conductors we think of as cultural icons and household names emerge from these pages as vain, self-seeking, and egotistical monsters – pocketing huge sums in secret deals behind the backs of their employers, and moving from one orchestra and city to another in a relentless search for more prestige.

This starts with figures such as the mercurial and dictatorial conductor Toscanini and the unscrupulous record producer Walter Legge, and then moves into more recent years with company takeovers which seem more motivated by whim and rivalry than any artistic or business logic.

He’s very well informed about all sorts of details. How Decca was a haven for gays (Britten, Tippett, Maxwell Davis) and how Deutsche Grammophon (owned by Siemens) had used slave labour from the death camps to keep its empire going.

The golden years are awash with lucrative record deals, and projects which replicate every popular classic known to man, ten times over. But then in the 1960s things begin to change. That’s because the record companies suddenly realise that they are making more money out of pop music.

By the end of 1956 Elvis had sold $22 million worth of discs and merchandise in the US, half as much as the whole of the classical market.

From this point onwards there was a struggle between pop and classical in the board rooms. One brought in the money, the other wasted it on a prodigious scale. Despite a temporary revival with early music, the end was in sight. And when it came there was lots of grief and pain for everyone. By the time we reach Internet downloads and Peer-2-Peer filesharing, the game is up.

You’ll love this story if you are interested in behind-the-scenes of the music world, and gossip about those people with high reputations but much lower levels of behaviour. It’s got schadenfreude by the bucketload. (Actually, that’s a fair example of Lebrecht’s style rubbing off on me.)

And yet for all his dirt-dishing on the famous, he actually supports a high patrician line of cultural conservatism. You get a strong sense of regret that things have turned out as they have. He doesn’t see the process he describes as one of change, fuelled by one technology after another, which probably has more people listening to classical music than ever before – as I am doing right now, over the Internet.

© Roy Johnson 2007

Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Norman Lebrecht, Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness, London: Allen Lane, 2007, pp.324, ISBN: 0713999570


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Filed Under: Media, Music Tagged With: Cultural history, Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness, Media, Music

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