Meaning, memory and the Irish media
*Notes from a beach. *News media want things to be new. They feel inhibited from reporting things unless they have a 'news hook', whether or not the information would be of value.
Art, media, opinion and ideas
*Notes from a beach. *News media want things to be new. They feel inhibited from reporting things unless they have a 'news hook', whether or not the information would be of value.
BelmulletOriginally uploaded by Conor LawlessDuring August of this year I wrote a blizzard of letters for clients of McGarr Solicitors who were worried about their crab fishing pots. As it turned out, they had good reason to be worried. Traditionally, August is the middle of the Long Vacation, and therefore ought to be a sleepy time for law firms.
I'm in Kilkenny today, at Podcamp Ireland. It is a very diverse group of people- more demographically spread than any other gathering I've been to. I was talking about using the PaperRound methodology to teach media literacy, and broader critical thinking, to, mostly, Transition Year Students.
Back in November 2006, when we undertook our first Paper Round analysis, one of the very first stories I read was a front-pager, in a “quality" daily, which purported to alert the nation to the problem of employee fraud but was based entirely on quotes from a man who solved this self-same problem for a living.
Co. Meath, 1 day after the Lisbon Treaty passes, we presumeOriginally uploaded by Editor_TuppAs Cian on Irishelection pointed out, the Irish Independent yesterday printed a story on the odder anti-Lisbon material available. This story hung on the inclusion of two images from the Flickr pool I had set up earlier in the week.
Yesterday, Feargal Keane reported on RTE Radio 1's Drivetime that the Lisbon Refendum Commission were spending large amounts of money on advertising on Facebook and Bebo. Keane described the journalistic reaction to this at the press conference as one of guffawing and barely controlled mirth, which sounds about right. This is why young people in Ireland don't buy newspapers.
Richard Delevan highlights a story from the Sunday Business Post yesterday- Estate Agents accused of supplying false sales pricesIt reports that the Irish Time's Property Editor, Orna Mulcahy, wrote to Estate Agents who were suppling her with sale prices when the numbers being given were be sufficiently fantastic to embaress her journalistic mores.
If you'd like to know what on earth possessed us to do the Paper Round review of newspapers, you can now read an interview with me, Fergal and Copernicus on the Irish Left Review. The other two guys have excellent and thoughtful answers. While you're looking at Irish Reviews, the Irish Pirate Review has been pumping out sea-going goodness for the last few days.
Around midnight last night I started to recieve a series of bounced Mail Undelivered messages from lots and lot of email addresses in Russia. This was odd, because I didn't email anyone in Russia. It turns out that my main email address smcgarr{AT}tuppenceworth DOT ie has been the victim of a Joe Job- that is to say it is being used as the fake 'reply to' email address by spammers.
Last week I noticed something peculiar- The Paper Round's raw coverage (which was presented in the form of a wiki to allow for interested parties to add their views) had vanished. If I go to the Paper Round front page now I getMyWiki has a problemSorry. This site is experiencing technical difficulties.
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