guardian.co.uk •
September 7
Palestinian TV satire Watan ala Watar unites political rivals – in anger
Palestinian TV viewers drop everything to watch local politicians sent up in nightly sketch show
Political rivals Hamas and Fatah are united – in anger. But the bite-sized nightly satirical sketches of Watan ala Watar have become a Ramadan sensation, cheering thousands of Palestinian television viewers through the holy month.
The show has distracted families from the iftar meal that breaks their traditional daily fast, causing them to abandon half-eaten plates of chicken, lamb and rice for 10 minutes of intensive mockery of their political leaders.
Watan ala Watar – the title roughly translates as "country hanging by a thread" – has been broadcast every night since Ramadan began on 11 August.
When the holy month ends this week, so will the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation's top-rated show.
The sketches have controversial themes of politics, corruption, nepotism, religion and morality.
One depicts the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh neglecting political duties for the attentions of a glamorous Lebanese singer visiting Gaza to scatter a little stardust over a population under siege. Another shows officials charged with tackling corruption in the West Bank handing key jobs to relatives. Relentless mockery is made of the western-backed Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad. The credits show a Gazan woman puffing away at a water pipe under her veil in defiance of a Hamas ban.
"We put issues under the spotlight, and when you make people laugh you reach them," says the show's star and scriptwriter, 33-year-old Imad Farajin. "We touch traditionally taboo issues."
Farajin – like his co-stars – has become instantly recognisable on the streets of his home town, Ramallah. Not all the attention has been welcome.
"I feel there is a lot of electricity surrounding me. The programme bothers a lot of people." Criticism reached a peak a couple of weeks ago, he said. "There were a lot of people telling me to stop, that I shouldn't be doing this. Tremendous pressure was exerted on us."
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was approached by critics demanding the show be taken off the air, according to the Watan ala Watar team. But Yasser Abed Rabbo, a veteran Palestinian politician, defended it, says Farajin. "He told the president that we live in a democratic society and that we shouldn't be stopped."
The programme reaches beyond the Palestinian territories, thanks to its appearance on YouTube within an hour of being broadcast, and a Facebook page.
Storylines focusing on Fatah and Hamas politicians are the most sensitive, says Farajin, but other topics have been the subject of internal debate at the PBC.
"There have been discussions about whether to show some episodes, but none have actually been omitted. Sometimes we ourselves feel we have gone too far, especially with religion," he says.
"Ours is a conservative society – there are some sexual taboos we can't touch." Other issues out of bounds, he says, are political prisoners, Palestinian refugees and "martyrs".
Farajin, a Muslim who studied at drama school in Liverpool, is looking forward to taking a break after Ramadan. The current series of Watan ala Watar is the second, but its future is undecided.
Although convinced of the value and necessity of satire and irreverence, Farajin has not lost sight of his underlying beliefs. "We have a right to live free with dignity under a sovereign state," he says.
A lot of Palestinians, he says, are "sick and tired of slogans and procrastination".
After 30 episodes of Watan ala Watar, their leaders should be well aware of that.


NetNewsCheck Latest News Feed •
September 7
Behind USA Today's Radical Restructuring
Rick Edmonds connects the dots at USA Today, starting with declines in print circulation, advertising, hotel distribution and travel, and then looks at the promise of digital growth and how the reorganization could help.
NetNewsCheck Latest News Feed •
September 7
Some See Ploy As Craigslist Blocks Sex Ads
Since blocking access to the ads as the Labor Day weekend began — and suspending a revenue stream that could bring in an estimated $44 million this year — Craigslist has refused to discuss its motivations. But using the word "censored" suggests the increasingly combative company is trying to draw attention to its fight with state attorneys general over sex ads.
NetNewsCheck Latest News Feed •
September 7
Blogger Catches Adult Ads On Boston Globe
Last week, the Boston Globe ran an editorial calling on Craigslist to remove its "adult services" listings, which it did over the weekend amid pressure from state attorneys general. But today, the Globe is caught with egg on its face for doing the same thing.
NetNewsCheck Latest News Feed •
September 7
Web-TV Independent Covers Orlando Scene
IzonOrlando is home to a dozen video series filmed in Orlando. The weekly shows, which are free to view, include subjects such as sketchcomedy, yoga and eating challenges at local restaurants.
NetNewsCheck Latest News Feed •
September 7
Reverse Ads: Agency Uses Web Video On TV
From San Francisco-based agency Crossover Creative we see the usual TV-to-Web polarity reversed in a series of video banners that moved from the Web to TV spots.
NetNewsCheck Latest News Feed •
September 7
Papers' Online Rev Up 14%; Print Ads Decline
Figures released by the Newspaper Association of America show total print and online ad spending fell 5.6% the quarter compared to the year-ago results - the lowest Q2 total since the pre-Internet year of 1985. Online-ad spending, which NAA says now accounts for 12% of total revenue, jumped by 14% to $743.9 million.
J-Lab •
September 7
Melbourne Writers Festival Closing Address
Remarks by Jan Schaffer, J-Lab Executive Director
Sept. 3, 2010
Melbourne Writers Festival
Melbourne, Australia
Hello. And thank you for inviting me to be with you. It has been good to be here the last couple of days and understand how similar your issues are to what is happening in the United States.
We are in exciting, but daunting, times in the enterprise of journalism.
As I look at how the media ecosystem is evolving in communities large and small across the United States, I am much more optimistic than pessimistic that citizens will get their information needs met. However, I also think that traditional journalists will play a smaller -albeit still important - role as the gatherers and disseminators of news.
The New News will give other kinds of people important roles to play. They include citizen media makers, partnership coordinators, fact entrepreneurs, creative technologists, philanthropic foundations, universities, advocacy groups and even governments.
In this future, both professional and amateur journalists will need to do more than commit acts of journalism. They also need to commit acts of data, acts of information gathering, acts of collaboration - and acts of engagement as well.
All this means we have to expand our scope of work just as we are forced by economic realities to reduce our feet on the street. In the New News era, journalistic enterprises must engage in new kinds of “news work” to serve their audiences. “News work” is more than reporting, validating and writing a story.
It also requires such things sharing information, facilitating conversations, crowdsourcing [inviting people formerly known as the ‘audience’ into the act of newsgathering], smart curation and aggregation, data mining and data visualizations, commissioning news games and exercises, gathering lists and resources, shouting out your good work to others - and responding to readers’ comments on it.
What this really means is that Big-J Journalism organizations can’t do it alone anymore, sitting in their ivory towers. We need to deputize new feet on the street, incentivize new sources of news, empower new ideas, and re-imagine what journalism could be it if were to be a product that no one could do without.
Imagine a journalism where our audiences could walk away, saying: “Wow, that was a really useful story.” Instead of wanting to plug their ears at the noise of the latest political fisticuffs. Or glaze over more mind-numbing reports of the latest celebrity mishap.
Unfortunately, we still await developments in the definitions of news. However, many developments are already happening in the delivery of news. I see at least eight trends in the U.S. and you may be seeing some of them here as well.
- First is the blossoming of hyperlocal community news sites. Many communities around the U.S. and now here in Australia, too, have begun getting regular reports of town and school meetings for the first time ever. The impetus for these sites is coming from several places:
- Individuals are launching some local news websites.
- Companies such as AOL’s Patch.com are rolling out others.
- Traditional news outlets are trying to local reports under their own brands, such as the New York Times’ Local sections.
- Second is the rise of statewide news ventures, many of them focused on covering a state capital and many with an investigative bent. These include things like California Watch and NJ Spotlight and Texas Tribune.
- Third is the birth of independent metro news sites. We now have at least 10 sites that have staffs of professional journalists covering news in such cities as Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Minneapolis, St. Louis and New York City.
- Fourth: the growth of more university-based news sites using students but also working with local residents to cover nearby communities. We have funded several, including Grand Avenue News at the University of Miami, Grosse Pointe Today at Wayne State and Intersections: South Los Angeles at the University of Southern California-Annenberg.
- Fifth: the increasing participation of creative technologists in building innovative news applications. Last year, the New York Times won J-Lab’s Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism with a body of journalistic work built on computer programming skills. They included such things as Document Cloud to read documents online, Word Train to track key words, and Represent to track elected officials.
Sixth: the increase in collaboration, instead of competition, between old media and new media makers, and organizing these experiments into citywide networks.
A year ago, J-Lab funded a Networked Journalism pilot project that paired five legacy news organizations with five local news sites in their communities. All have added new partners and all the partners want to continue working together for a second year to develop some ad networks.
- Seventh: The increasing participation of philanthropic foundations in supporting independent journalism startups and community information needs. Foundations once worried about funding projects that might compete with fragile legacy news organizations. More recently in the U.S., however, they have become so alarmed at the diminishing news coming from downsized local news outlets that they are seeking ways to intervene.
- Last is the rise of respected advocacy news sites on both the national and local level. Sunlight Foundation is a key example of advocating for transparency in government while also creating amazing ideas for news coverage. It just won this year’s Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism with its dynamic, multi-faceted coverage of last spring’s health care summit. In such cities as Chicago and Philadelphia, local niche news sites are reporting on public education while also advocating for good schools.
But there’s a caveat here: We’re also beginning to see the emergence of more agenda-driven, politically partisan sites that are masquerading as neutral news sites. How will readers know which advocacy sites have some journalistic DNA and which do not? This is yet to be determined.
All of these developments involve tremendous experiments in the area of “news work.” Not all of these initiatives will be successful, but many are producing excellent journalism.
Most are exploring hybrid models of support, eking out income via a variety of sources - memberships, donations, sponsorships, advertising, coupon deals, events, fee-based training, crowd-funded stories, grants and consulting. Yes, some if these news sites are starting to make money by training local businesses and nonprofits in how to build websites or use social media.
It’s interesting to me that while all this experimentation is going on around business models for journalism and delivery models for journalism, there seems to be very little invention around that involves the product itself - the stories that comprise our journalism. At best, we’ve added some multimedia bells and whistles, some moving parts and some digital options.
I think there are a lot of opportunities to offer journalism that has more added value that what we are now generally producing. There are opportunities for:
- Coverage of “master narratives:” Stories that take the 5,000-foot view instead of the 50-foot view of important issues.
- Stories that connect the dots on trends or developments that help people make sense of their world.
- More explanatory journalism that really unpacks issues and not just parrots pro and con viewpoints.
- Stories that do a better job of asking the obvious questions that readers have - but somehow don’t always occur to journalists.
I will tell you that as I’ve moved from being a story editor to just an every-day reader, I frequently fume when reading a story and wonder who edited it. Why is there so much missing information? Why didn’t the story even address the most basic of questions? I’m sure you do, too.
- Stories that revisit paradigms that define conflict as “news,” that engage in scorecard journalism, that pretend at balance by only parroting extreme points of view.
- Stories that zag instead of zig. That description comes from a former editor of mine, Gene Roberts, some 30 years ago, but I think it very much applies in new ways today. There’s too much duplication of story effort. We need journalists who are skilled at rendering important things as journalism, journalists who can examine issues from fresh viewpoints.
Once when I was spearheading a big civic journalism initiative in the ‘90s, one of our funded newspapers, the Myrtle Beach Sun News, mailed postcards to its readers with six questions. One was: What really makes you mad right now?
What emerged were issues - such as offensive signs defacing that beach community - that the newspaper did even realize were bubbling beneath the surface.
- I also think there are opportunities for stories that make clear that truth is a plural, not a singular. word. There are many truths depending on various points of view. What if, for instance, instead of reporting on where people disagreed, we focused on where they agreed?
As journalists we do a very poor job of validating consensus. If a reporter is sent to cover a meeting where everyone agrees, he’ll likely come back and say, “There’s no story.”
Increasingly, news organizations should be liberated to just say “no:” They are not going to cover something just because everyone else is. They should take the lead to say: It’s not a story worthy of our resources.
To be honest, I’m not sure we know how to do this kind of journalism very well. We are so trained in the competitive race to publish seconds ahead of others, so initiated into the tribe of journalists that we don’t want to be shunned, so beholden to some of our sources that we don’t dare disappoint, so steeped in the conventions of journalism on auto-pilot that we don’t even know how to build up the right reflexes.
J-Lab funds a small hyperlocal news project in the town of Deerfield, N.H., that has going for five years. It’s mostly a volunteer effort, but it now has some 350 contributors and posts 50 original stories a week. They cover local town meetings and state legislature. I found it enlightening that its readers, in a recent survey, said they felt they were “better educated” than readers of the nearby daily newspapers about state and local government.
How can that be? Well, if you parse their coverage, they not doing scorecard journalism. They are just explaining to readers what a piece of legislation is about and who’s voting for it and why.
Another of our funded sites, NewCastleNOW.org, recently covered hot-button meeting in town with video and pretty much a chronological iteration of the session. This is totally contrary to what we are taught in journalism schools. Yet 35 people who couldn’t make the meeting weighed in with powerfully substantive comments and suggestions. When I got to thinking what that coverage would have looked like in a traditional daily newspaper, it would have had a lead that said something like: School Board Criticizes Developer’s Proposals. It would have had a strong high quote, another from the opposing side, a few paragraphs of background and some reaction from key players and it would be a wrap.
How citizen reporters define news and report news differently from professional journalists are just a couple of the things we have learned in funding community news startups.
J-Lab has funded 55 projects since 2005 with small grants, about $25,000. Many of these efforts sought to train citizens to generate stories for the site. Some were university projects. Others were launched by so-called “civic catalysts” - those bumblebees that pollinate a lot of community groups and carry a lot of knowledge about their communities.
Here are five of our key takeaways:
- Citizen journalism is a high-churn, high-touch enterprise:
Citizen journalism math is working out this way: Fewer than one in 10 of those you train will stick around to be regular contributors. Even then, they may be “regular” for only a short period of time. Projects that counted on citizens to produce content had to develop alternative plans for stories or they struggled with little compelling content. Our recommendation is to tease out, rather than train in advance, these contributors.
- Sweat equity is key: Projects built on the grit and passion and community knowledge of a particular founder or corps of founders have created the most promising models for sustainability.
- Social media is game changing: Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools are ushering in a New Age for Community News, creating robust recruiting, marketing, distribution, collaboration, reporting and funding opportunities that can put a new startup on the map with the speed of light.
- The academic calendar is not good enough: University-led projects built with student journalists need to operate year-round to avoid losing momentum and community trust. They hold great promise but must surmount great hurdles.
- Hyperlocal sites are not a business yet: There is great demand for local news and information but the supply is very fragile. Many of the projects that we funded are volunteer efforts. But others definitely want to be able to pay salaries and health benefits and build sustaining operations.
If we were to measure the New Voices projects by mainstream media or venture capitalists’ measures of success, we’d looked at how much money they raised or how many unique visitors they received. And some did very well.
But we also identified some other measures for success that may rise in importance as we look at future funding models. We found that the projects:
- Gave a community regular coverage that either never existed before or was, at best, episodic.
- Triggered other news coverage of community issues. The community sites served as listening posts for bigger media.
- Became go-to places for crisis information that town officials could not provide.
- Imparted political knowledge and empowered voters in new ways. Newcomers were elected to office; voter turnout increased.
- Helped solve community problems or elevated community issues. Problems that might not rise to the level of a Big-J journalism story got addressed in the small-j journalism world.
- Fostered community media skills. These projects trained a lot of community residents in how to interview and videotape and edit - even if not all those trained stuck around to write for the sites.
We emerge from this stage of our grant experiences with some recommendations ?both for startup community news sites and those who wish to support them:
- Try everything. Keep what works and redo what doesn’t.
- Remember that the community doesn’t only want news; it also wants connections.
- Think of your task as not just covering community, but building it as well.
With everyone in search of new revenue models for journalism, there is an assumption that sites must bring in money to be sustainable. Again and again, we’ve seen volunteer New Voices efforts that are sustaining themselves with little income. And we do believe that community news, as a new form of civic volunteerism, is one important model.
We also believe some kind of support, be it private, philanthropic or government, will evolve to support these enterprises because, once whetted, we believe citizen demand for this kind of information will endure.
Moving forward, the landscape keeps changing in exciting, but challenging, ways. Commercial competition is moving full bore onto the community news scene. Professional journalists, gone from their newsrooms, are ferreting out new ways to continue practicing journalism in the local news space. Social media is ramping up the speed of site launches. And, new technologies continue to introduce new opportunities and efficiencies.
What is not changing is the keen demand for news coverage - and for connections - in communities large and small, from metro suburbs to college towns to rural areas. We have seen how the opportunities for empowering citizens to be citizens are activated when they have the news and information they need to do their jobs as citizens.
Matching that civic demand with civic sustainability continues to be the challenge for the future.
Romenesko •
September 7
Coroner's office bills Florida Times-Union $300 for two interviews
Twitter.com
They totaled 45 minutes, according to Times-Union local news managing editor Marilyn Young's tweet. "This is a first for me," she says in a second tweet.

Romenesko •
September 7
'Disney CEO Iger has long had Westin in his crosshairs'
Daily Beast
ABC president
Anne Sweeney looked like the corporate henchwoman even though the make-ABC News-more-profitable mandate came from Disney CEO
Bob Iger, report
Peter Lauria and
Lloyd Grove. Their source says
David Westin's resignation "has nothing to do with Sweeney, this is 100 percent Bob. Bob deals with Westin directly."

guardian.co.uk •
September 7
Ex-Channel 4 boss Andy Duncan takes wheel at HR Owen
Marketing specialist swaps digital strategy for post as chief executive of luxury dealer selling Maserati, Ferrari and Rolls-Royce cars
The former boss of Channel 4 television has taken up a new position at the wheel of luxury car dealer HR Owen.
Andy Duncan, 48, is swapping digital strategy and multiplatform media to run 10 luxury and supercar franchises, including Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti and Rolls-Royce.
Duncan is a marketing specialist, who ran Unilever's Flora spreads business before switching to broadcasting. Today, the new chief executive, who is also a non-executive director of music chain HMV, said he was attracted by HR Owen's "heritage and brand" and was looking forward to selling "exciting products to an eclectic mix of customers".
The upmarket dealer traces its roots back to 1932 and its outlets include the landmark Jack Barclay showroom in Mayfair – which has a salesman dedicated to finding buyers for the £1m Bugatti Veyron 16.4.
Duncan – who currently drives an Audi S5 Cabriolet and says his new company car "has yet to be confirmed" – intends to develop a strategy that will iron out the peaks and troughs caused by the wider economy. "The business needs a long term strategy … something less cyclical."
Duncan quit Channel 4 a year ago after five years in which he oversaw the broadcaster's digital strategy and the launch of channels including E4 and More4. However, he was widely criticised during the Celebrity Big Brother Shilpa Shetty racism row in 2007 and failed to do a deal with BBC Worldwide to secure alternative funding for the business.
Prior to joining Channel 4 Duncan worked at the BBC, as director of marketing and communications, where he was also the architect of digital TV and radio and internet services and was the founding chairman of the Freeview digital TV platform.
HR Owen's shares were unchanged at 83p. In the depths of the recession last year they plunged to 48p, but the company recently reported improved sales – 300 prestige cars sold in the first six months of the year, compared to 250 over the same period last year – and a £1m return to profits.
The dealer has had a substantial boardroom reshuffle since appointing former Lex Vehicle Leasing executive John Walden as chairman. Longstanding chief executive Nick Lancaster, who still owns 20% of the business, quit in May and a number of non-executives – including former Pink Floyd drummer, car enthusiast and 2% shareholder Nick Mason – followed him out of the door.
Lancaster is not the only big shareholder. Bentley also owns a 27% stake. Duncan said he would like to see more shareholders: "If the base can be broadened that can only be a good thing."


AEJMC •
September 7
Directory Individuals – H
Ha, Jongwon; prof. Sch. Comm., Sunmoon U.; PhD, Seoul National U., 1993; teaching areas: media effects, mass culture, audience; 100 Galsan-ri, Tangjeong-myeon, Asan-si, Chungnam, 336-708 Korea; office: 82-41-530-2529, home: 82-11-9811-2529; <haphil<at>msn.com>. Ha, Ju-Yong; asst. prof., Dept. Mass Comm., Inha U.; PhD, Southern IL U., Carbondale, 2004; MS, IN St. U., 1998; MA, Korea U., 1994; BA, Korea U., 1991; experience: [...]
AEJMC •
September 7
Directory Individuals – I
Iannelli, Gerard C.; Affiliated Scholar, Center for Clinical Bioethics, Georgetown U.; Retired: home: 250 Pantops Mountain Road, Charlottesville, VA 22911; (434) 972-2356; <GCIannelli<at>aol.com>. Ibelema, Minabere; assoc. prof., Dept. Comm. Studies, U. AL-Birmingham; PhD, OH St. U., 1984; MA, OH St. U., 1980; BA, Wilberforce U., 1979; experience: 4 yrs. nwsp. summer sabbatical, 11 yrs, fac. [...]
AEJMC •
September 7
Directory Individuals – J
Jabro, Ann D.; 437 Stud. Ctr., Robert Morris U.; 6001 University Blvd. Moon Township, PA 15108; <jabro<at>rmu.edu>. Jackson, Cathy M.; asst. prof., Dept. Mass Comms., & Jour., Norfolk St. U.; PhD, U. MO, 2004; MA, U. MI, 1980; BS, Jackson St. U., 1979; experience: 9 yrs. rep.; 5 yrs. instr.; division: D,G,M,O; 6471 Crescent Way, [...]
National Press Photographers Association •
September 7
Gernsheim Collection Opens At UT's Ransom Center
"Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection," a collection that showcases the history of photography, has opened at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
CyberJournalist.net •
September 7
Channel 4′s latest web project reinvents quotations for the Twitter age
Quotations are ubiquitous, from Facebook and Twitter to media coverage and watercooler chats. But the experience of finding a quotation online is often messy and reliant on amateurish sites that seem to rely on the same old quotes – and that’s the problem a new Channel 4 project is aiming to fix. By Jemima Kiss
This article was written by Jemima Kiss, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 2nd September 2010 12.05 UTC
“My favourite quotation is £8 10/- for a second-hand suit,” Spike Milligan once said.
Quotations are ubiquitous, from Facebook and Twitter to media coverage and watercooler chats. But the experience of finding a quotation online is often messy and reliant on amateurish sites that seem to rely on the same old quotes – and that’s the problem a new Channel 4 project is aiming to fix.

Photo by PhillipC on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Quotables wants to reinvent the quotations dictionary. Co-founded by Channel 4 and the Arts Council, there’s a focus on literature but also some priority C4 areas including comedy, news, the arts and independent British cinema. C4′s new media commissioner for factual, Adam Gee, said that despite the number of quotations sites already out there – from Wikiquote and ThinkExist to BrainyQuote and QuotationsBook – there’s room to do much better, because many of those reuse the same databases and rehash the same misattributions and inaccuracies.
Charlie Brooker: “Snakes. They’re like bits of rope, only angrier.”
“We had the realisation that the way we interact with quotes online is really lacking in many respects,” said Gee. “It’s not a fun experience or an easy experience, and when you do find something you have no idea if it is accurate or not. Quotables is starting from a blank sheet, built from the preferences of an active community.”
Oscar Wilde and Socrates will make the cut eventually, but there’s as much of a focus on events, TV and popular culture; the end of Big Brother has been a focus for Channel 4.
Albert Einstein: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
Gee said there are four dimensions to the project. He hopes Quotables will become to quotes what Delicious is to links, a standard utility for saving and sharing. There’s also a buzz element, capturing trends in quotes on different days; Tony Blair was a hot topic yesterday. And over time it value as a reference tool will increase, as will its community.
David Gibson, from the Edinburgh Fringe: “I’m currently dating a couple of anorexics. Two birds, one stone.”
Is the popularity of short quotes a symptom of how the internet is rewiring our brains, impairing our ability to process long-form content? These are 75-word quotes. “By having these nuggets from great works of literature, great speeches, great articles, we’re encouraging the entirety to be read and that’s part of the ongoing programme of functionality. One aspect is we’re building a batch upload process of independent publishers so they can upload a selection of the best quotes from recent publications, and it gets published alongside links to Amazon or their own online shops. But concision is really about encouraging a more considered, careful submission so people don’t submit a whole paragraph – what is the essence you are put across?”
Quotables was conceived and commissioned by Channel 4, built by Mint Digital and co-founded by the Arts Council and Channel 4. Gee describes it as halfway between a standard Channel 4 commission and an investment, more like that of 4ip. The aim is to make Quotables a sustainable, standalone business and it already has an office base and small team in Glasgow. Gee would not say how much had been invested in the project.
Terry Pratchett: “Build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for the night. Set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.”
“It’s not extravagant but it’s not tight. And it has been budgeted for the long view. The emphasis is on building a lovely experience and a core of enthusiastic users and around them a community people enjoy being a part of.” He said that as well as advertising, there are plans to help the project sustain itself by adding merchandising – “Moo-style” hard products.
“People have been very generous in sharing the repositories of inspiration,” said Gee. “Quotables has the edge over what’s out there at the moment; the fact you have proper tools for the quotes – the ability to edit tags, the ability to correct things, for finding duplicates, proper attribution and more accuracy. And a system of lists as well as tags so you can keep your own stuff sorted.”
All of which reminds me of a line my Dad used to say was by Virginia Woolf, along the lines of: “Efficiency cuts the grass of the mind to its roots.” I’ve never been able to find it – does anyone know?
There’s more from Quotables on its blog and you can subscribe to daily quotations from Quotables on Twitter.
Woody Allen: “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”
• Elsewhere, Channel 4 is working with Six to Start on a project with the working title ABC – Arts Buzz Culture. “It’s an early-warning cultural radar system, particularly picking up on online buzz around discovering and sharing arts and culture events,” said Gee. If you frequently find events are sold out or are over by the time you’ve heard about them, this will be for you. It’s a working prototype, and the design side is being developed with Rob Bevan of XPT. “It’s a difficult design job – you’ve got to make it seem very simple and not overwhelming. The creativity and brilliance of the design is hidden in its simplicity, in many ways.” It’s personalised, social – and due out in 2011.
Dolly Parton: “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb… and I’m also not blonde.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Google News •
September 7
Justin Fox Talks about the State of Financial Journalism and Economic Policy ... - Wall St. Cheat Sheet (blog)
Justin Fox Talks about the State of Financial Journalism and Economic Policy ...
Wall St. Cheat Sheet (blog)
The Hoffman Brothers uncovered an electronics retailer which is scaring Best Buy! We're up BIG. See how you can profit NOW. ...
Google News •
September 7
Journalism prize winners announced wednesday - AngolaPress
Journalism prize winners announced wednesday
AngolaPress
Luanda– The winners of the 2010 edition of the Maboque Journalism Prize will be announced Wednesday in Luanda, during a ceremony involving a cultural ...
Google News •
September 7
Can Twitter replace traditional journalism? - editorsweblog.org (blog)
Can Twitter replace traditional journalism?
editorsweblog.org (blog)
It came as no surprise that the hostage situation which took place at the Discovery Building last week was first reported on Twitter. ...
and more »
Google News •
September 7
Retired AP reporter gives IU School of Journalism $1.75M - Indianapolis Star
Retired AP reporter gives IU School of Journalism $1.75M
Indianapolis Star
He covered stories for more than 30 years and his work was read by thousands of people in Indiana. Now Marty Anderson, Avon, ...
Retired Reporter Marty Anderson Gives IU School of Journalism Its Largest Gift ...Newswise (press release)
all 9 news articles »