My Digital Notebook

I’ve already written about paid search and politics, but a far more obvious digital tool for politicians over the next few months is social media.

It’s an obvious and efficient way of politicians (and budding politicians) engaging with their constituents or target audiences to get their message across. Some good examples being:

Ed Fordham’s website

Alastair Campbell’s Blog

Iain Dale’s Diary

Tom Watson’s Twitter Feed

Watching each of these grind into motion over the last year has been interesting and this week it has been satisfying to get a bit of social-media-political-attention for myself.

Clowns and Parks

I live in Islington, just off Pentonville Road. Opposite my flat is Joseph Grimaldi Park, named after the man who invented the identity for the modern clown and who, Joe Frankenstein contends in a recent book, was the very first celebrity.

For interest, here is a snippet about Grimaldi:

Grim-all-day

A man goes into the doctor’s. ‘Doctor,’ he says, ‘can you help me? Life doesn’t seem worth living, and I am shrouded in constant gloom.’ ‘My good man,’ says the doctor, taking a look at the melancholy face before him, ‘there is only one cure for you. You must go to see Grimaldi the clown.’ ‘Sir,’ replies the patient, ‘I am Grimaldi the clown.’

Depressed or not, Grimaldi was a sensation and two centuries on his bones lie in the park opposite my flat.

All good and interesting until workmen arrived a month ago and dug it upside down.

After weeks of muddied shoes and sharp clatters from beyond the window, I wrote on Twitter:

“Oh. And congratulations to Islington Council for transforming the lovely Joseph Grimaldi Park into something that resembles a bowl of porridge”

It was about as much as I had time to say on the subject. It wasn’t a concern but it was an irritant. The kind of latent issue that a councillor/politician would never get to hear about in a letter or at a public forum, but which they might just find out about if they took the time to study the Internet.

And well done to Bridget Fox for doing just that. Within the hour I received an @tweet informing me about plans for the park and estimated deadlines and this morning it was followed up by a blog post.

If you glue those two things together it adds up to about as much direct engagement I’ve had with a politician for years. Mostly my fault, I know – but a lesson for politicians nonetheless. If you want to dig beneath the surface (pun intended) and engage with the apathetic masses – then social media is a pretty good way to go.

I suppose it would be glib and rather self-absorbed of me to suggest that I was going to vote for a politician because I’ve appeared in one of their blog posts. But in a world of beeping computers, identity numbers and automated messages it is comforting to communicate with another directly. And when it comes down to it, that might just make the difference.

–

Image Credit: Rich Lewis

By Harold’s Planet.

A memorable day for the British media

A good day for the British media. A good day for press freedom. A good day for the Guardian and, especially, its editor, Alan Rusbridger.

Briefly written, here’s what happened.

–

I’ve little to add that hasn’t already been mentioned elsewhere, but here’s a thought.

Today we saw old and new media working together. Newspaper editors and journalists were interacting with bloggers and twitterers. There were articles, blogs and tweets – all repeating the same message over and over and over again.

There was an unfamiliar sense of unity. The idea that if the media worked as one it could defend a principle that it felt strongly enough about.

And after years of new and old media growling at each other from different corners of the same room, this was something new.

An important principle has been defended – and that is the most important point of all. But perhaps it is worth noting that some bridges might just have been built in doing so.

–

image credit: Ricky David

Digital You

A short post, but a useful one (I hope).

Any digital identity needs consistency and coherence. So whenever we have a new starter at work I always ask them to secure their online profiles across the most important social media sites.

But which ones? Um. These, I reckon:

1. Wordpress (importantly)
2. Tumblr (for blogging)
3. Vimeo (for video)
4. Flickr (for images)
5. Delicious (for bookmarking)
6. Twitter (pointless little messages)
7. Audio Boo (for audio recording)
8. Posterous (for blogging)
9. Friend Feed (an aggregator)
10. You Tube (for video)

So there you go. You’ll notice that facebook isn’t on the list, as to my mind it isn’t really too useful for work. I just hope your name isn’t Peter Moore, or I might just have annoyed you.

But have I missed anything obvious?

—

image credit: JMC Photos

This made me laugh. A song made entirely of sounds from Windows 98 and XP. Enjoy.

A view from the boundary

This is an interesting tale. I’ll just report the facts of the recent public fall out between Will Buckley of the Observer newspaper, and Jonathan Agnew, the BBC’s cricket correspondent.

Here we go.

Saturday 22 August:

Jonathan Agnew (affectionately known as Aggers) interviews Lilly Allen (the pop star) live on Test Match Special during the lunch break of the final Ashes test at the Oval. (Listen to the audio here)

Sunday 23 August:

An article is published in the Observer by Will Buckley (the Observer’s senior sports writer), describing the interview. The article is called When Aggers met Lily: an unrequited love affair for the middle-aged, and it included the following paragraphs:

“And, finally, it arrived but when it did so, and as is so often the case, Agnew/Allen turned out to be more about the interviewer than the interviewee as Aggers attempted to walk the dangerously thin line between benevolent uncle and desperate middle-aged man panting on the edge of the dance floor. He failed. “You weren’t even born then, oh dear” and “I’d have thought you’d be more of a one-day girl” and “I’m quite getting into your music” and “I’ve been out there and played a bit” and “it’s just destined to be” and “is this what you expected to find up here” and “we might go and see Warney later” – all suggesting that Aggers had positioned himself firmly on the pervy side of things.

“It had all, as with so many putative celebrity couplings, started with a tweet. Aggers was alone in a stand in Edgbaston. He was lost, but he was found. “We keep plugging the Twitter because it’s good fun,” said Aggers, who went on, not to put too fine a point on it, to admit that he has been stalking the young singer ever since the third Test. So it was that he knew Lily had bought a watch which … wait for it … “didn’t fit”. “It looked big,” was the Aggers verdict.”

Monday 24 August:

Jonathan Agnew writers on Twitter:

• I gave Will Buckley 24 hrs to aplogise for calling me a pervert, and he has declined.
• If you feel moved by this his boss is brian.oliver@observer.co.uk well, as you can imagine, I have taken being called a pervert quite badly.
• and you should hear how he described readers of theObserver to me……
• I will tell you how he described his readers (you) if he fails to print a total apology to me and my family on Sunday
• Don’t want him sacked…just an apology

[Five tweets over a 15 minute period, the last at 11:16 PM ]
—-
Meanwhile, more and more comments are left by readers of the Observer at the bottom of Buckley’s piece. Most of them attacked the writer for a ‘jealous’ and ‘nasty’ attack. You can read a long list of them here.

Tuesday 25 August:

The Observer receive more comments about the article throughout the morning and at around ten o’clock Lilly Allen publishes the following on her Twitter page:

• I rerally [sic] think this Will Buckley guy should apologise to @aggerscricket, he was nothing but kind and gentlemanly to me during our interview
• i dont know 1 person that agrees with The Observer on this one. Maybe this is Buckleys attempt at creating a name for himself as the demise
• of the Observer Monthlys(including Sport) are imminent. Sorry @aggerscricket , i should have left you all alone

[Three tweets over a 10 minute period]

At 2:48 p.m., the Telegraph publish the following article: Lily Allen defends Jonathan Agnew over ‘pervert’ slur

Meanwhile Jonathan Agnew writes on Twitter at around midday:

• “Apparently a statement from Buckley will be appearing soon in the comments under his “article””

At 3:15 pm Will Buckley publishes the following response in the comments’ section:

My, what a commotion. Before the tone becomes even more shrill I would like to apologise to Jonathan and his family for any offence caused by this article. It was intended to be a skit on Aggers and Tuffers and the cult of celebrity but has obviously not been received in this way. The joke missed. As they so often do in the blogosphere.

That said, it should perhaps be pointed out that at no stage did I describe Jonathan as a pervert. I am unlikely ever to be in a position to comment on Aggers’ sexual proclivities and even if I did find myself so placed I wouldn’t dream of doing so. The word I used was ‘pervy’ which to me is a Benny Hill style word rather than one to be taken too seriously.

There is also, it goes without saying, no foundation in my claim that Aggers is jealous of Tuffers. Who could be jealous of Tuffers? This was merely a piece of whimsy based on Jonathan being slightly pompous and huffy when Phil refused to become caught up in the excitement about Lily Allen coming to the TMS box and delivered his wonderful Denis Bergkamp line.

As I have written many times before, TMS is my favourite sports programme and I can’t wait for the team, tweets and all, to be broadcasting from South Africa.

Wednesday 26 August:

More comments followed Buckley’s apology overnight and the following morning Jonathan Agnew writes, once again on Twitter:

• “Just for record, am leaving it to the Obs Sports Ed to decide if that apology is sufficient. But what an eye-opener this has been for all to the power of new media. It is here and will change the way news is responded to, in particular. This showed what twitter can do. Thanks

—

It’s an interesting story, with a few unlikely participants.

Firstly, it is interesting that a cricket commentator (see previous post) turned to social media to express his anger rather than a more traditional media channel, and, secondly, it is worth pointing out that Buckley blames  all of the ‘commotion’on the blogosphere (curiously he does not think his article has much to do with it) in his apology. He writes:

“The joke missed. As they so often do in the blogosphere.”

This naive – and rather dismissive – sentence betrays Buckley as someone who still hasn’t quite got it. And it also reminds me of a blog post written by Graham Holliday on his Noodlepie blog which is simply titled ‘Wankers’.

Nearly three years ago, he wrote:

“I came across this quote which perfectly sums up the clash of old and new mindsets – I’ve added links to make it a wee bit more understandable.

I do get the sense that the Guardian’s columnists are simply not used to this kind of medium, they are not used to getting feedback in public where they can’t just hit ‘delete’ to get rid of a pesky critic.

Suw …. likened such old school thinking to this:

It’s like them walking into a pub, making their pronouncements and then walking out. Later, they are shocked to find out that everyone is calling them a wanker.

Nowt new. I just love the last two sentences. Perfect.”

—

image credit: speckled jim