Parent bloggers - giving the internet a bad name?

I know I shouldn't have done it, and actually I blame Nicki Cawood:

Brilliant article on @Tots100 http://bit.ly/k73jg5 Should PR Agencies pay Travel Expenses For Bloggers?less than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet ReplyNicki Cawood
NickiCawood

My gut reaction to the question was to snort "No!" and leave it at that, but then I made the mistake of clicking through the link and reading the article. Still working against my better judgement I left a comment.

Before I get ahead of myself, the gist of the piece is that PR companies should pay the expenses of bloggers that they invite to attend events. Then there were eight comments in agreement with the blogger. I felt it was time for some balance, so left a dissenting comment. It wasn't an attempt to be controversial, I just happen to disagree with the post and commenters so far. My comment got a couple of responses and I replied to some of them, but there is more to say about this and I don't want to appear to be a troll over at Tots100 so I'll marshall my thoughts here.

So - should bloggers expect to get travel expenses to attend marketing events paid by PR companies?

No. If you really want to go find a way to pay for it. Otherwise, don't go and write about something else. As I said in my comment, you've decided to go it alone as a parent blogger and you have to live with that choice. If you want to work for a media organisation with a budget for travel then go and do that. But it's better to make what you're doing work for you. If you attend the same product launches as everyone else your blog will be just like everyone else's. Surely an advantage of running your own blog is the freedom to write about what you want, when you want, how you want? Don't be a mouthpiece for big business; do your own thing.

But we're only hobbyists, we're not running a business here.

I know. My hobby is photography and if I want to go to London to take photos I don't expect to get train tickets sent in the post by the London tourism board. If it's your hobby, it's kind of the idea that you pay for it yourself.

PR agencies who did an occasional blogger outreach out of London would get a lot of kudos (and probably some good write-ups for their clients).

Yes, but your review of something should depend on the quality of the item, not how well you're treated by the PR company.

What I think is saddest about this is that the bloggers are letting themselves be partially driven by the agenda of the PR circus. Blogging should be about doing your own thing, writing what you want to write. A day spent making a six hour round trip to London for a thirty minute event could be spent finding local contacts. There will be people making stuff near you, there are baby groups you could visit, and local newspapers who might want columnists. Rather than be driven by the marketeers use some of that initiative you showed when you learnt to self-host WordPress, get out in your communities (real or virtual) and bring in your own stories.

In Manchester football journalism really is dead.

Oh dear. Yesterday I blogged about Sir Alex Ferguson's heavy handed response to Rob Harris' question in a press conference. I suggested that football journalism is broken because of the balance of power between the media and the clubs.

Forty-seven minutes into today's PM programme (iPlayer link) there's an illuminating interview with Peter Spencer, the Sports Editor from the Manchester Evening News. Spencer basically says he doesn't want people coming into press conferences rocking the boat and upsetting the clubs; and he puts the pressure of filling pages above his reporters' right to probe a bit.

I'm not suggesting that journalists abandon commercial realities. Of course papers need filling, but we need to be honest with our audience. In countries where governments are hostile to the media or where correspondents can only travel with a state "minder" it's not unusual for the restrictions and conditions placed on the journalist to be made clear.

It'd be great to see sports journalists being as candid as their colleagues in hostile nations about the restrictions their working under, whether self-imposed or not.

(Thanks to Andrew Glover for giving me the nod about this interview)

Press injunctions: maybe it's Fergie's fault.

In the same way that Apprentice candidates have to call Alan Sugar "Lord Sugar", you're meant to call Alex Ferguson "Sir Alex", but he does little to deserve that respect. Manchester United, and Sir Alex in particular have a relationship with the press that's based on fear and loathing. He's scared of them and he hates them. Considering that the Reds just pocketed £60 million pounds via the Premier League from TV companies you'd think that they'd be better disposed towards the media, but not so.

Fergie thought he could ban a journalist from Associated Press who asked a non-injunction-busting question about Ryan Giggs at a press conference, where journalists are supposed to ask questions.



Rob Harris simply asked this: "The most experienced Champions League player in the team's obviously Ryan Giggs, it's the fourth final for him, how important for the team is he on Saturday?"

But for Fergie it was too much and he set about planning to ban Harris from the pre-match press conference on Friday. A press conference which is managed by Uefa and that United have no control over. I had been wondering how Giggs could have been so badly advised about managing the media recently, but if his boss behaves like this you can see where his influence may lie.

Football journalism is actually broken in this country. Newsrooms are scared of being denied access to clubs. They shy away from stories that show the clubs in less than glorious colours and don't ask difficult questions because they fear becoming persona non grata at the training ground or in the press box. I'd like to see a sports desk take the risk and if they're declined further access then tell it like it is and inform their audience what's gone in. In 2011 there have to be other ways of reporting football that don't depend on attending the regular press conferences anyway. I know it won't happen, but I'd love to see it.

Podcast round up

I do like a good podcast. I subscribe to several that are a mix of UK radio shows I can't listen to live, US public radio that's been recommended to me, and podcasts that aren't made by traditional broadcasters. I usually listen to these in the car during my 40ish minute trip to work.

First up is Answer Me This which is having a spring break while Helen and Martin the sound man get married. Answer Me This is a simple idea, done well. Sometimes a bit smugly, but well. Listeners send in questions, asking Helen Zaltzman and Ollie Man to "Answer me this..." Helen and Ollie use all the knowledge available on Wikipedia to provide answers and gently mock the questioner. I've been subscribing for about a year and it's the podcast that makes me shout at the radio the most. Which is probably not the interaction they're aiming for with their audience, but it makes me happy. When the podcast comes back Helen and Ollie are going to be smugger than ever as they've just won a Gold for Best Internet Programme at the Sony Awards.

Desert Island Discs is brilliant as a podcast. With shorter musical inserts (for contractual reasons) the castaway's story suffers from less interruption. Kirsty Young is very, very good interviewer able to move easily between chapters in the castaway's life and clearly enjoying every minute of it. The castaways themselves aren't always well known public figures, but are always interesting. Recent favourites have been Johnny Vegas, Lawrence Dallaglio and Alice Cooper.

I'm sure that Steve Martin won't mind me describing the Earshot Creative Review as being a podcast for radio anoraks only. It's a review of creative content made for radio: jingles, promos and adverts. Steve knows his stuff and brings in a range of contributors each month from commercial radio and the BBC to play stuff they've made and been inspired by and talk about why it works. It's often recorded on location somewhere, is always well made and is much more fun than it sounds.

Radio 4's Friday Night Comedy Podcast allows you to catch up with the Now Show or The News Quiz, depending on which show is having a current run. The News Quiz is the radio precursor to Have I Got News For You, presented by Sandi Toksvig and The Now Show is a Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis vehicle with an eclectic roster of extras and guests. Whichever show is running you'll get half an hour of satire based on the previous week's news. It should be essential listening for news junkies and comedy fans alike.

I'm going to bundle the next two together. Media Talk and Tech Weekly both come from The Guardian's impressive stable of podcasts. They take advantage of The Guardian's expert journalists in these fields so Media Talk's regular presenter Matt Wells will be joined by the likes of Maggie Brown and John Plunkett as they round up what's going on in the media. Tech Weekly sees Jemima Kiss, Charles Arthur and other Guardian tech heads in the studio with Aleks Krotoski.

Karl at work suggested I try WNYC's Radiolab. It's a fantastic, but sometimes frustrating listen. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich present each hour long episode which will feature three stories loosely linked by the edition's theme. It's sort of science based - because it's a Radio Lab - but the storytelling is more important than the science. The programme has a distinctive style which is where I sometimes fall out with it. It's higly edited, and sometimes the presenters will talk over a contributor to precis what they've said and move the story along. To me this is an example of form triumphing over content and it causes more shouting at the radio. That said it is something different to anything I've heard on radio in the UK and does feature some brilliant stories. The fortnightly episodes are an hour long, but the podcast feed also includes "Radiolab Shorts" which are bitesized extras where you can hear material that didn't make the cut, pieces inspired by the longer episode and sometimes responses to earlier programmes.

99% Invisible is another programme from US public radio. It's presented and produced by Roman Mars, the man with the best name ever. It describes itself as "a tiny radio show about design"and recent editions have included Soviet design classics, concrete furniture and Nikko the Concrete Commando who scratched his name across a city. Roman is a droll host and each five minute episode is made with as much love and care as each hour of Radiolab.

So that's what's in my Podcast library in iTunes. What do you think of my selections, and what do you regularly download. Let me know in the comments.

Audition CS5.5

When the public beta of Audition 4.0 for Mac came out I downloaded it straight away and blogged about my first impressions. Since then I've enjoyed having a version of Audition on my MacBook, and now that the final release has come I've taken advantage of a generous education discount and bought the full version.

I was surprised to see the new version of Audition included in the CS suite, because I thought Soundbooth would stay there and Audition would be on it's own branch. However it does make much more sense to bring Audition in with the other pro apps. Soundbooth has been discontinued, so there's no budget audio editor from Adobe: it's Audition or nothing.

There's not a massive amount more to say. I haven't given it a full work out yet, so can't tell you too much about the functionality. Visually the final release is very similar to the beta; a History palette has been added to the bottom left of the screen, and you can search for help in the top right corner.




There are a couple of other things I've noticed that are different to Audition 3.0, and probably were in the beta too. In the multitrack view you used to be able to drag a clip out of the files panel and move it across to the right hand end of the timeline prompting everything to move left and allowing you to find the end of the previous clip. This was really neat for quickly putting together radio packages and doesn't work in the new version. I also liked the "Autoplay" tick box in the open/import audio file dialogue box that allowed you to preview files by clicking on them which was handy if you had a large directory full of sfx or other files to browse through.*

In the beta there was no "Generate" menu which in 3.0 allowed you to create tones and noise. This is still missing, as is the ability to group clips in the multitrack view.

For a full list of what hasn't made it through from previous versions into Audition CS5.5, or what's been renamed have a look at this page on the Adobe website.

Over the next few days and weeks I'll explore the package further. If you've questions, or things you want trying out (mainly from a broadcast production point of view, I'm not planning on recording an album) then leave a comment and I'll do what I can to help.

*I've just remembered that in OS X you can use Quicklook to get a preview of files in dialogue boxes by clicking on the icon, which is almost as good as Autoplay. How you can replicate that in Windows is another matter.

Shiny like Chrome

Earlier in the week, for reasons that I've not been able to work out, Safari died on me. Clicking bookmarks in the bookmark bar froze the program. Deleting preferences, clearing caches, resetting the application and other suggested fixes didn't fix it.

I've stuck with Safari since it was a beta, and have been happy enough with it - we're only talking about a web browser after all, and it's the content that really counts, not the conduit.

I've had Firefox installed for the odd website that didn't play well with Safari, but in contradiction to what I've just said, I never really liked it much and don't fancy using it all of the time. So I've installed Chrome and I have to say I'm quite happy with it. Rather than trying to import settings and bookmarks from my sick version of Safari I started at scratch.

The first thing I set up was the Save to Delicious bookmarklet, because I store most of my bookmarks there and just use what I can fit in the bookmarks bar locally. (Delicious is great, and seems to have a better future now that Yahoo! have sold it. If you've never looked into Delicious, you should). Then I added extensions for bit.ly and Evernote. I don't like the default setting of new tabs opening next to the current one, instead I want to open at the end of the tab bar, like Safari, and there's an extension for that too.

I subscribe to one or two RSS feeds, and although they're all in Google Reader I don't like that interface and prefer to read them in NetNewsWire. Chrome doesn't seem to have native support for sniffing out feeds and subscribing to them, but a bit of Googling brought me to these instructions and the RSS subscription extension.

And I think that's all the tweaking I've done. What have I missed? What are the extensions you like and use the most?

Thirsk fire

I heard about Storify a while ago, and it's now gone into public beta so I was keen to have a play.

Then tonight there was a big fire in Thirsk, so I had a little play.



If you're not familiar with Storify it's a way to curate content from various social media sites to help tell stories.