links for 2010-07-20

"Editors are first and foremost there to ship the product without getting sued. They order the raw materials—words, sounds, images—mill them to approved tolerances, and ship. No one wrote a book called Editors: Get Real and Ship or suggested that publishers use agile; they don't live in a 'culture' of shipping, any more than we live in a culture of breathing. It's just that not shipping would kill the organism."

"The Sun has launched a competition for budding journalists aged 16-21 to find the next Kelvin MacKenzie or Jane Moore. Column Idol is being run with the charity Media Trust and offers the winner the chance to have a full-page column published in the paper, to visit the Sun offices and receive mentoring from top Sun staffers."

"Facebook’s reason for not taking the pages down is that it felt the pages did not breach its terms and conditions. So free speech rules on Facebook? Maybe not. An interesting point made on Kate Silverton’s show on Five Live on Sunday morning was that many of those people who had become fans of these pages had done so so they could condemn the page. That’s the point, to me, which suggests Facebook has managed to actually stifle free speech. You have a situation where someone can create something you might find outrageous, yet you’ve no way to argue against it, other than making yourself a fan of it and then criticising it. A bit like a member of an anti-fascist group joining the BNP to infiltrate it from within – it bolsters the membership number in the short term."

"The Greek mainstream media has been having a field day with the tragic death of 37 year old journalist Sokratis Gkiolias yesterday, shot 13 times by three men outside his home in the Athens suburb of Ilioupoli by serving up ever wilder stories about terrorist attacks on the country's media. One TV presenter, Popi Tsapanidou even went as far as to say that the event was 'Greek journalism's 9/11' on Skai TV channels morning news program."

"There are 50 new social media sites created every day. That’s not a fact based on anything factual, just a fact based on the concept that the creation of new ones never cease". I beg your pardon? Did we just wander into an episode of Brass Eye?

"The thing is, the people who ask these question never seem to grasp that they are asking it of people who do the same thing – writing – for money. Not for fun, but to make a living. It’s a business. Now, you wouldn’t email a list of, say, plumbers or mechanics or piano tuners or accountants and say: 'Hey, how about I do a bit of work for some of your customers for free? Just to get noticed'".

Paul Wakely blogs about a new appeals process against moderation decisions. One of the pertinent quotes: "As well as all the email folders, people who wanted to complain about moderation would write to radio station and TV programme inboxes, post to the boards, phone BBC information or email the BBC Complaints department. This all caused duplication and wasted your licence fee".