May 2011
How to spot a psychopath
Photograph: David Yeo for the Guardian
From Broadmoor to boardroom, they’re everywhere, says Jon Ronson, in an exclusive extract from his new book
“I think we have to start differentiating between the public interest, and a proper definition of what that means, and stories that the media decide the public people might be interested in… it’s not the same thing.”
—Alastair Campbell, British Labour’s former director of communications, on tabloid journalism and the superinjunction
How many style guides do journalists really need? →
poynter.org
I remember a fellow journalist telling me how her J-school professor once ordered students to write out the entire AP Stylebook by hand as part of a class project. The exercise, I was told, was designed to help the students memorize the Stylebook entries.
I still wonder how these students reacted after they became professional journalists and found out that not all newsrooms use AP style.
If they went to work for a magazine, they probably had to learn the Chicago Manual of Style. If they work for an online media company, they may have had to learn the Yahoo Style Guide, which covers the basics of writing for Internet and mobile audiences. In most other cases, they would have had to master the various in-house styles that most media companies have and use to ensure uniformity in their content.
Do journalists really need all these style guides?
The role of journalism
“Joel: You can’t put that in your newspaper!
Maurice: Why not? It’s the role of journalism, to give people what they want!
Joel: No, that’s the role of professional wrestling.”
From the series Northern Exposure
“And Bill Keller should understand that, at its best, Twitter is not a broadcast medium but a medium of conversation. What he has done so far on Twitter is the equivalent of walking into a party and saying a provocative sentence, followed by sitting at the corner sipping his cocktail – as in “#twittermakesyoustupid. Discuss.” Social encounters are satisfying and worth mostly to the degree that one participates in conversations, rather than announces witticisms and withdraws. Yes, I am a professor but I do not walk into random rooms and expect people to quietly take notes on what I am saying while I launch into a speech, projecting my voice to the back of the room. Keller cannot understand this medium if he treats it as something different than what it is, and to understand requires participation in its indigenous form, conversation.”
—Zeynep Tufekci (via soupsoup)
“The authors of The Story So Far explain that “the link between a consumer’s getting the news and a providers’ expensive investment in publishing, broadcast, and delivery [has been] broken.”
—The Story So Far: Will Sponsored Content and Creative Ads Save Digital Journalism? - Nathaniel Parish Flannery - Governance Perspective - Forbes (via mediafuturist)
“Make the complex, simple and the mundane, emotional”
—Greg Melander - my basic design aim (via gregmelander)
