Category Archives: Media

The Wire

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So you still haven’t seen The Wire? Prob­ably the single best thing on a TV mon­itor since the genius that was Alan Bleas­dale’s G.B.H., and 21C television’s single best attempt at recre­at­ing the 19C novel.

It’s dense struc­ture and tight plot­ting means it has to be watched night after night — not once a week — one box set at a time. Any­one inter­ested in telling a story on TV — in drama, news or oth­er­wise could learn from it.

It will at once restore your faith in audio-visual enter­tain­ment and make you gasp in aston­ish­ment that UK net­work tele­vi­sion couldn’t find time to air it (espe­cially given the num­ber of Brit act­ors in it).

Here is the whole thing in one 5′ rap homage:

2009: More action, less conversation

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Pilote de Guerre by Antoine de Saint-ExupéryDave Cohn, the force of energy behind Spot.us is host­ing this month’s Car­ni­val of Journ­al­ism. He’s after pre­dic­tions for 2009.

Well, I don’t really have a pre­dic­tion of the “Someone will dis­cover a busi­ness model for Twit­ter” vari­ety. It being the sea­son of reflec­tion and all, it’s more an observation.

It seems to me that we have talked for years now of tech­no­logy and com­munit­ies without ever stop­ping to ask what — if any­thing — might bind them together. The assump­tion is that it is con­ver­sa­tion, that the con­nec­tion simply enables and — lo and behold! — the com­munity pops into exist­ence. Well, con­ver­sa­tion is not enough. You have to do something.

If you don’t believe me, ask Ant­oine de Saint-Exupéry. Con­tinue read­ing →

Saving journalism, one summit at a time

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World Economic Forum Summit on the Global AgendaLike Jeff Jar­vis, I too was in Dubai for the World Eco­nomic Forum’s inaug­ural Sum­mit on the Global Agenda. Charlie Beck­ett (whose upsum­mer is here) and I were in the Future of Media group. So what was our dia­gnosis of the state of journalism?

Well, here it is. We did talk about cen­sor­ship and val­ues — but remem­ber what Oscar Wilde said about a camel being a horse designed by a com­mit­tee: Con­tinue read­ing →

Just who is the FT’s mysterious BBC Trust mole?

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Anthony Fry, BBC TrustThe Fin­an­cial Times has a trenchant cri­tique of BBC World­wide and its impact on the pub­lic ser­vice broad­cast­ing debate.

But who exactly is the per­son ‘famil­iar with the BBC Trust’s think­ing’ that they quote? Or the lead­ing Lon­don banker? Don’t be temp­ted by the obvi­ous jig­saw iden­ti­fic­a­tion.

A per­son famil­iar with the BBC Trust’s think­ing says: “The suc­cess of World­wide has argu­ably threatened the BBC’s future more than any­thing else in recent times, by sim­ul­tan­eously provid­ing an image – pos­sibly illus­ory, pos­sibly not – of great wealth and a yard­stick, also pos­sibly illus­ory, of sup­posedly anti-competitive beha­viour.” Con­tinue read­ing →