media & PR archive
David Laws: questions for him, questions for political journalists
The advanced leaking of a supposedly highly confidential Parliamentary report is just the sort of tip that political journalists love and we all often enjoy reading or hearing about. But there are leaks and there are leaks, as the widespread leaking of the Parliamentary Commissioner’s report into David Laws demonstrates with the three questions it raises. [...]
Embracing trends in social networks: FT coverage, with my thoughts
Today’s Financial Times has a feature on the impact of social media on those in the financial services industry: Reputation is one of the most valuable assets companies possess, but controlling it amid the rising influence of social media is a growing challenge. Financial services personnel who naively think their company has no presence on [...]
My letter to The Guardian, unpublished
Sir,
I noticed that around half the recent stories about phone hacking on the Guardian website with photos feature a photograph of Sienna Miller. Does she make up around half of all the people whose phones were hacked?
Yours etc.
The power of words
A short and simple film which powerfully makes the point that your choice of words matters – and that the real power of words lies in telling simple stories rather than making factual statements: Cross-posted from the MHP Communications blog.
So you want to be a political journalist?
A sister title to Shane Greer’s So you want to be a politician?, Sheila Gunn’s So you want to be a political journalist? is a collection of thrity-two lively short chapters giving an insight into the life of a political journalist. With an impressive cast of contributors, including Peter Riddell, Carolyn Quinn and Michael White, [...]
The power of TV: more Dutch than Louis XIV
I should be a TV-sceptic. I barely watch TV myself (DVDs and iPlayer being my preferred form of entertainment). I spend too much time online. I have too many internet enabled devices (work portable, personal portable, work Blackberry, personal Blackberry, desktop PC, iPad – power charger manufacturers must love me). And yet… When I get [...]
Youth unemployment: when one in five isn’t one in five
It normally sounds pretty obvious – you work out the unemployment rate by looking at the number of people in work and the number of people seeking work. But sometimes that leads to rather odd figures, as today’s youth unemployment figures demonstrate. The Guardian’s headline, One in five young people out of work (headline used on [...]
Cute dog deployed to improve corporate image
Cute animals have done wonders for many companies and products (including the Andrex Puppy, a client at work). So perhaps it’s no wonder that following increasing criticism and an unflattering film portrayal of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is now hosting a page for Zuckerberg’s cute puppy. The pup modestly says “I am extremely cute”. [...]
Why the BBC has axed the word "reform" when talking of electoral reform
The BBC has given an official response to complaints (such as mine) that it has banned the use of “reform” as in “electoral reform”. As I wrote: Given that the phrase “electoral reform” has been a widely used term for decades to describe all sorts of different proposals to change the electoral system and given [...]
