Mock-up final NOTW front page by Adam Westbrook

With yesterday’s announcement that the News of the World is going to be printed for the last time this coming Sunday, now I’m outraged.

There’s a disgusting irony in that the closure of the paper – with the loss of 200 direct jobs – has been prompted by the sustained campaigning of the political left; the people who have a political mission to save jobs have caused a whole bunch of jobs to be lost. Not just any jobs, though – innocent jobs. Remember, the phone hacking scandal took place 5-10 years ago – none of the people who are losing their jobs this weekend were responsible for what took place back then, indeed, of the people losing their jobs this weekend only about five of them (according to the News of the World’s outgoing political editor) were even working for the paper at the time of the scandal. 200 innocent jobs are being scapegoated in order for The People of Twitter to feel like they’ve secured an historic victory, sticking it to The Man.

Yes, 200 innocent jobs – one thing I missed out of my post on Tuesday was my increasing cynicism about being told to be outraged by Twitter; more often than not (and I’ve been guilty myself), when Twitter tells me to be outraged about something on the Monday, information which comes out by the Wednesday reveals that there are other important aspects of the story which put a different slant on the outrage. So whilst this Tuesday, Twitter was effectively calling for the News of the World to be shut down, once it secured its victory we learn that different slant. Whilst the chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, the editor of the News of the World at the time the criminal activity started who must surely have not only been aware of what was going on, but must have signed off on it, escapes (so far, at the time of writing) completely free.

The 200 jobs which are being lost on Sunday were not responsible for the phone hacking scandal – those 200 jobs were the people responsible for uncovering Sarah Ferguson’s flogging time with her ex husband Prince Andrew to people hoping to gain business advantages as a result of such meetings; they were the people who proved corruption within FIFA and who uncovered the corruption within Pakistani cricket.

As an educated middle class left-leaning person, I’ve never been a fan of the News of the World’s editorial style or stance, but one less newspaper for sale on Sunday is hardly of benefit to our society. Much as my hyperlocal blogging friends like to see themselves as plugging the gap left by the gradual withdrawal of the mainstream media from local journalism, a few possible high-profile examples aside, keen amateurs simply don’t have the skills or resources to undertake the kind of sustained investigative journalism needed to keep those in power accountable to those who aren’t – and to those who are calling for more statutory regulation of the media, do you really think a State-regulated press is healthy for democracy?

There’s also the question of the wider effects of the News of the World’s closure – although a mere 200 people were directly employed by the paper (some of whom may get the opportunity to apply for other jobs within News International), the paper has been reported as being the most widely read newspaper in the English language; as well as the direct employees, there are also the indirect employees – the paper suppliers, the distributors, the newsagents and other shops – who will lose a significant portion of their livelihood overnight.

So, do we feel proud of ourselves?

Venn diagram by Mr Wowser

What’s that, you say? That since I don’t normally buy the News of the World (or subscribe to any other Murdoch media products), and my rubbish isn’t taken away by the council anyway, that me proudly declaring my boycott of them is a completely empty gesture?

Well, quite. And ultimately, that is why boycotts fail, and why calling for boycotts is usually an empty gesture – because the people who call for them are far more often than they aren’t not actually customers of the Bad Company(tm) in question in the first place, and if they’re customers of another company in the group rarely do they extend that boycott to their own purchasing when to do so will cause themselves more than the slightest inconvenience. I suspect many of the people calling for a NOTW boycott – who are also extending their outrage to the whole of News Corporation and calling for Rupert Murdoch’s intended purchase of the remainder of BSkyB that he doesn’t already own to be blocked – are also Sky subscribers. For their outrage to be genuine rather than empty, they’ll also be cancelling their Sky subscriptions and suffering a bit of personal inconvenience – that’s what a boycott is about, not about telling other people not to do what you don’t already do anyway.

Similarly, those who call for a boycott of companies involved in the disputed territories of Israel/Palestine actually have it quite easy – there’s bugger all that they might want to buy in a shop which is actually produced there, so ultimately the boycott of standard retail goods boils down to looking at the label to see where one’s avocado comes from. And not buying SodaStream any more, for anybody still living in the 1970s. If one really wants to take a stand, if you live in a municipality which uses Veolia for rubbish processing you’ll opt out of the council’s rubbish collection and take personal responsibility for disposing it elsewhere (and probably not to the council tip, because that itself is probably operated by Veolia as well). I will however allow them to continue to have their sewage taken away by t’Corporation (even though a lot of the specialist valves used are manufactured in settlements in the disputed Golan heights) – emptying my own toilet myself on a twice weekly basis is one of the few aspects of my own lifestyle I wouldn’t wish on others.

As an aside to the boycotts issue, I must confess to be now suffering from Twitter Outrage Fatigue Syndrome; I’m sure back in the olden days of Usenet outrage was there (especially in the darkest corners of the talk.* hierarchy), but it seems practically a day doesn’t go by without half of Twitter telling me to be outraged about the latest outrageous thing. Frankly, I think the phone hacking scandal is a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s an outrageous thing. The arms trade, the ongoing banking crisis, and our government’s continued eagerness to spend money on wars which should be spent on the NHS, they’re worthy of outrage. I’m even inclined to be more outraged that two Birmingham MPs are campaigning to relax the ban on smoking in pubs. Dodgy practice by a handful of journalists 5-10 years ago is not remotely on that scale.

In the best traditions of milestone soap opera anniversaries, the script writers are promising something extra special and extra explosive for the feature double-length episode on January 2nd. For a bit of fun, here are my predictions as to what the options for that explosive episode might be, based on the storylines that have been developing over the last week or two:

• The crims who are rustling hay come round and torch the barn at Brookfield, with somebody inside it – it’ll be just like Grace all over again
• Helen will have a miscarriage as a result of her over-exertions and ignoring the advice of the medical professionals
• Pip takes her driving test before she’s ready to and ends up crashing the car big-style
• Phoebe steals a wad of cash, runs away and gets a plane to South Africa to join Kate
• Joe Grundy, enjoying his new found pastry chef skills developed whilst Clarrie has been laid up with her broken wrist gets overconfident has a terrible baking accident involving Bartleby and the cider shed.

So there.

“Wellderly, webinar, disbenefits and under-capacitated are among new forms of jargon being used by the public sector, a survey has revealed. Such impenetrable phrases are on a list of banned words published by the Local Government Association (LGA)”.

It seems to have become a new biennial news story about office jargon, especially in councils:

• Why do councils love jargon?
• Workplace jargon isolates staff

At least this time around the LGA admits that jargon is often necessary for internal use:

“The LGA said it was ‘impossible’ for organisations to avoid all jargon in internal communications but there was no excuse for such language to be used in public information”.

Indeed.

Of course, as the point I made last time around – council’s don’t deliberately want to obfuscate, it’s not in their interest to. When council-speak does leak out, overwhelmingly that’s due to a staff member in a service area putting out communication themselves, rather than – as they are supposed to – going through their service area’s communications teams, part of whose core function is to check the text & convert it into plain English.

But sadly in the current era of cuts and “slashing make-work back-office paper-pushers in order to protect front-line services”, communications staff are considered superfluous, and communications budgets - both for activity and for salaries – are being slashed.

So with a reduced number of people employed in local government to ensure your leaflet reads like it was written in English, expect more webinar trialogues over the coming years.

In my day job recently I’ve been doing a bit of project planning, using existing numbers to predict future numbers. Let’s play with these swine flu numbers a little, shall we?

On June 10 the number of reported swine flu cases was 800.

Meaning that at the reported exponential infection rate, by June 17 there were 1,600 cases, June 24 3,200, July 1 6,400, by July 8 there will be 12,800, July 15 25,600, July 22 51,200, August 1 102,400, August 8 204,800, August 15 409,600, August 22 819,200, and ‘the end of August’ gives us 1,638,400 cases. We’re of course not counting the people who no longer have the illness by the end of August, because news reporting hasn’t been telling us how well and quickly people have been recovering, just how they’ve been succumming.

So, lets say now that by the end of August, we tail off the exponential infection rate and just keep with the linear infection rate of 100,000 per day. That’s a million people every ten days, or three million people per month.

October will in that case give us 4.5 million cases, November, 7.5 million cases, December, 10.5 million cases, January, 13.5 million cases. Or a full fifth of the whole UK population.

Scaremongering?

“Britain’s Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle has been taken to The Priory Clinic in London with exhaustion. The Scottish singing sensation is said to be drained after losing out to dance group Diversity on the ITV1 show”.

I had managed to avoid the whole of Britain’s Got Talent until where I was last weekend on saturday night a friend decided to show some of the YouTube clips.

Frankly, I thought the winners Diversity – whilst clever & talented dancers – were quite dull as a performance, and that Susan Boyle, whilst she could moderately well hold a note (though the opening of her performance of Memory was rather shaky), was no better than practically any singer to have come out of any national, or even regional level music college. The notes were coming out, the tone was OK, but there was no personality behind the singing – a good performer makes the piece their own. A mediocre performer might as well be a pianola.

But as for the current story of her being taken to hospital because of not being able to cope with the stress of not winning – well, harsh as it might seem to say so, that’s just tough I’m afraid. If the upset of coming second is enough to make her go to pieces, then she’s just not suited to a career in performing arts; ‘coming second’, knockbacks, rejections, and harsh criticism are facts of life in that world.

Performing arts is a stressful world; like it or not, you need to be mentally hard to cope in it. Most people who are successful in it have had a long preparation for it, in most cases since children – they cut their stress teeth by being sick all over the bishop at the cathedral in the primary school diocesan concert, by being part of the National Festival of Music for Youth concerts, by doing their grades, and by doing the music festival competition circuit. Stress is, as they say, part of the gig.

Susan Boyle had her two weeks of fame – if it was her dream to be a professional singer, she should be grateful for what she got. But just because it was her dream to be a professional singer, that doesn’t mean she has a constitutional right to have had that dream turn into reality. Whether she was mentally fit for it or not.

It’s sufficiently general that it works as good advice for any organisation thinking about how to modernise its public relations activity; indeed, it serves as excellent advice on how news organisations and magazines themselves might adapt to the reality of the modern world.

New cases of the deadly swine flu virus have been confirmed as far afield as New Zealand and Israel, as the UN warns it cannot be contained.

The US, Canada, Spain and Britain confirmed cases earlier but no deaths have been reported outside Mexico, where the virus was first reported.

From the way the news media – including online / social media sources – are reporting this developing story, anybody would think the world is on the brink of Terry Nation’s Survivors becoming a reality; the BBC Radio 4 Today programme headline for the item declares “Up to 40% of population could become ill“, with one commentator in the item reminding us that the country could literally grind to a standstill as not only the people being ill being off work, but also the people staying at home to look after them; and emergency planning teams of local councils issuing statements about how resiliant they are.

As of writing, in Mexico – where the outbreak started – the current total number of confirmed cases is 20, with 152 described as ‘probable’, and a further 1,614 people ‘under observation’.

In the rest of the world, where there are as yet no confirmed deaths:

Putting those numbers in perspective, the populations of those countries are:

Putting the numbers further in perspective, flu epidemics occur every year all over the world, and the human tragedy is that hundreds of thousands of people die of it every year with tens of millions of people – globally – dying in roughly three pandemics per century as a new strain emerges.

Tens of millions of deaths is clearly a serious human tragedy, but in the meanwhile, 884,000,000 people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, with 3,900 children per day – 1,423,500 per year – dying of diarrhea alone.

Over the last four years we’ve been being told we were all going to die of Bird Flu, and in November 2002 we were told we were all going to die of SARS.

I think clean drinking water is a more pressing concern.

(Source link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8022437.stm)

Danny Hayward, who is in charge of the project, said he is planning to hold open auditions to fill the lead role of the 27-year-old herself”.

Oh for crying out loud & the love of all that is sensible.

That is all.

(From BBC news)

Apart from the fact that it doesn’t take Columbo to work out that it’s pretty likely that if a terrorist was going to be planning an attack in Birmingham, the Bullring is about as high profile a target as it gets, the casual reader might be especially alarmed at reading this, thinking twice about whether to nip down to Selfridges today for their Yo Sushi! lunch.

That is, if they hadn’t read a few lines further down the page:

“Abedin, aged 27, was arrested in November 2000 and jailed for 20 years after being convicted of doing an act with intent to cause an explosion”.

ie, the ‘revelation’ that the Bullring was on a list of terror targets is that the list was compiled – and the compiler convicted – when the target in question was just about to be demolished anyway, a full three years before the present building which most people would be fearing for was opened.

Here in the social media world, we tend to call that sloppy journalism.