Unfortunate Imagery
Reading Zite on my iPad tonight and saw this headline:
Drilled down into the story to discover the young guy in the photo is actually NOT a victim (or perpetrator) of pedophilia, but is, instead, an Aussie in Japan:
News Corp’s Facebook Scare Campaign
This morning I ran a quick experiment. I searched through News.com.au’s site for stories that mention Facebook in the title to see what percentage of those stories had a negative slant. My theory is that large media companies such as News are scared about the amount of traffic Facebook is getting, as it’s decreasing their own readership thereby affecting the revenue they can generate from advertising. So they are running Facebook scare campaigns.
News Corp, of course, has even more reason that other media companies to be hatin’ on the Facebook, because they own MySpace, Facebook’s biggest competitor.
So – on with the results.
NEGATIVE STORIES
Facebook pedophiles stalk TV star, 11
Police probe students’ Facebook hate group
Spook’s wife in strife over Facebook post
Pupil’s Facebook slur against teacher
Facebook affair behind murder, suicide
Teacher dies after nude Facebook photos
Facebook used to organise Auburn racial riot – police
Nicole Kidman bullied on Facebook
Teenager fired from job via Facebook
Fake police Facebook page fools users
Premier Bligh writes to Facebook boss
Facebook removes kill-a-prostitute page
Teen’s death posted on Facebook first
Parents use Facebook to trap paedophile
Facebook deal forces computer clean-up
Rail bash teen’s mates turn to Facebook
Smiling in a bikini on Facebook costs Canadian woman her insurance
POSITIVE STORIES
Facebook extended to iPhone, iPod Touch
Pure Digital Sensia radio goes on Facebook, Twitter
Orangutan photographer a Facebook hit
Thief nabbed by Facebook detectives
So… out of twenty-one stories, there are FOUR positive stories (19%) and SEVENTEEN negative stories (81%).
The question is – does this show a bias in coverage?
Discuss.
TrueLocal Advertisers Deserve A Refund
I went looking for a house cleaner today and ended up on News.com.au’s TrueLocal site. I found someone in my area, clicked on their ad, then tried to send them an email. Up popped the below contact form. But I COULDN’T contact them because the verification captcha is broken. 
When I mentioned this on Twitter, @truelocal replied
@cameronreilly Thanks for brining it to our attention, it’s an issue from our end with Firefox3.5 and will thankfully be fixed v soon
Well that’s all fine and dandy, BUT, I asked, are you going to be refunding your advertiser’s funds? It seems to me like you aren’t delivering your promised services.
So far, no response from @truelocal….
It’s not acceptable when billion dollar media companies can’t get a freakin website to work properly. My suggestion? Stop hiring monkeys.
If I was a journalist for Fairfax, I’d probably do a story on this.
Bad news for newspapers
Bronwen has written a great piece explaining, once again, why newspapers (and the companies behind them) are at the end of the road.
Of course the argument for paid content is about defending commercial news organisations and not journalism. Problem is the two aren’t mutually exclusive anymore.
For starters, it excludes the competition from government subsidised media – SBS and ABC – who probably can’t wait for News Corp and Fairfax to start charging for their content. A senior news person at SBS told me just yesterday that he “WANTS those sites to charge!” – not because he believes in paid content, he doesn’t, but because it certainly brightens his future.
read more: bronwen clune » Blog Archive » Bad news for newspapers, great news for journalism.
Here’s my thinking about news “paywalls”
Pick any mainstream news brand site – News.com.au or TheAge.com.au – and take a look at the front page. Now, tell me – if you had to pay to read each of those articles, how many of them are SO RELEVANT to your life that would you pay to read them right now?
Here’s my quick analysis for today’s sites (click to zoom):
UK Radio Still In Decline Five Years AFTER Digital
I was doing an email interview with a journo this morning about the introduction of digital radio in Australia and I was asked if I thought, as the radio industry is apparently claiming, that the introduction of digital would lead to an increase in radio listenership. I explained that this certainly hasn’t been the experience in the UK, where radio listenership is STILL in decline five years after the introduction of digital.
(source)
I remember a few years ago when the radio industry in Australia wanted the Howard Govt to give them an exclusive license for “digital radio” in return for their investment in the infrastructure to roll out their digital stuff. This had some folks predicting podcasting would be outlawed. Telling the radio folks to go to hell was one of the Howard Govt’s better decisions.