:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 ::

Freelance

National Union of Journalists - Freelance Fees Guide
[via Bristol Flickr group]

Labels: Media, Photography

:: Dan 27.8.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Fox News Caught Flashing Subliminal John McCain Image

Labels: Media, News, Politics, psychology

:: Dan 12.8.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I saw a trailer on Channel 4 last night for the show Make Me a Christian. I found the idea of this repugnant. OK, so it may be fairly well balanced and may turn out to show the pros and cons of Christianity equally. But to be truly fair, shouldn't they be running Make Me An Atheist along side it?

The argument that you shouldn't take belief away from people, only give it to them, is weak. There are alternatives and people should be told what they are. For example, it should be explained that the morals we collectively live by are not necessarily of biblical origin, as religious people assume they are. People should be given the information and allowed to think for themselves.

Maybe a strand in the format of How to Look Good Naked could be replaced by How to Think for Yourself? It doesn't need to present any conclusions, it just has to present the evidence that one side of the argument would prefer you didn't see and give the other side a chance to respond. I wouldn't expect it to change society in any way, but it should be done nonetheless.

Labels: Media, Religion, TV

:: Dan 6.8.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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TV Turnoff Week
Originally uploaded by gusset.


TV Turnoff Week 2008 April 21th - 27th
Trash Your TV
White Dot

Labels: Flickr, Media, TV

:: Dan 21.4.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"Opinion is polarised. Some believe that the mass collaboration ethos that gave us Wikipedia and YouTube could also beneficially transform politics, the public sector and business, while others hold that it kills culture and undermines economies. Shane Richmond investigates"
[thanks to Tania for leaving a copy of the RSA Journal in the house]

Labels: FOSS, Media, Politics

:: Dan 10.1.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Two great 2007 summary posts I've found on other blogs today:

Octopus 99 review of 2007
Quote:
"Maddie : So nobody else went missing last year then. Look out for the McCanns on next year's Strictly Come Dancing.
Best Event Of 2007 : The Spice Girls comeback single failing to make the top 10. How fucking marvellous was that? And it was a charity single. Oh, how I laughed. I still get a semi just thinking about it."

And coincidentally (I was actually searching for Girls Aloud photos but that’s another story): Project 76's other end of yeariness

Great for tearing apart the Daily Empress. Hopefully my mum will STOP READING it this year. I printed out a huge critique I found of it last year but it doesn’t seem to have done the trick yet.

Labels: blogs, Media

:: Dan 1.1.08 [Arc] [1 comments] [links to this post] ::
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That's one hell of a fuckin' headline.

I impulse bought the News of the World for the first time in my life yesterday. I have scanned it for news content but have found nothing but hierocracy and footballers sex lives. (The "England ace" referred to btw is a footballer apparently.)

Here are the current top five stories on the website:
EXCLUSIVE: England ace in sex video shame ("New shocking video reveals two players in vile orgy")
WINEHOUSE: Gangsters threaten to kidnap Amy ("Pay £100,000 or we kidnap Amy" - Have they not seen Ruthless People? I'd not pay you 100 quid for her. In fact, I might pay you that to take her away.)
ROONEY: Tranny cousin wants to be bridesmaid ("The plump relative... He's been pictured tarted up as a SCHOOLGIRL on a night out—sporting short skirt, red knickers, long nails and a blonde wig... he'd turn the big day into a joke." Not passing judgement on transgender behaviour there then.)
BEER: 2008 will be year of the £4 pint
SEX: Daughter snapped mum cheating with her fella

And my favourite quote from the cover article:
"The film of Richards' roasting — a sick act which involves one man having sex with a woman from behind while she gives a second oral sex — was passed on to friends' mobiles by the swaggering pair."

They don't even seem to have the balls to print the term Spit Roast in full. Note the use of the worlds 'vile' (in headline) and 'sick' (in the copy). Moralising on group sex. Yet elsewhere on the site we find videos of "Brian's temptation: The arrival of sexy blonde au pair Helga" and "Dear Jane Episode 2: Sexy behind-the-scenes video with lesbian storyline." It seems that lesbianism and affairs with au pairs are not so ill judged.

The main article goes on to talk about several alleged rape cases and to speculate that "...Richards might care more when he realises how the scandal will put his budding England career at risk under new coach Fabio Capello — a renowned disciplinarian who demands the best behaviour from his players." So forget the law taking care of such matters. Let's moralise on it ourselves, trial them in public, and only worry about the image of the beautiful game. Without even passing comment on current proposed rape law reforms or that "less than six percent of reported rapes currently result in a conviction, down from 33 percent in 1977."

It's a sad state of affairs that this is the state of reporting in "Britain's biggest-selling newspaper."

Labels: Media, News

:: Dan 24.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Reporters sans frontières - Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index – 2007
"The Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information."

Labels: Censorship, Freedom, Media

:: Dan 25.10.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Jace (DJ /Rupture) on the demise of OiNK and what it means for music: OINK CROAKS
"The next Oink will be sturdier & more multiple. The overall movement is towards more ways to share music & ideas with like-minded individuals on the internet. The way I see it, this can only be a good thing for music fans. And what musician is not first a music fan?"
[via natali]

I never liked OiNK personally. When I got an invite I read the upload rules and decided it wasn't for me. But the media repoting of it has been biased and unfair in places, as is pointed out in the above article. Worth a read which ever side you're on.

Labels: Media, Music, P2P

:: Dan 24.10.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"Why the record industry is terrified of Radiohead's new album
Radiohead are the latest – and greatest – band to shun the conventional CD release. Their new album is available online – and you don't have to pay for it*"
* Actually, you're asked to pay what you think it is worth, but you can make that as low as a penny, which was far as the press is concerned means it's free.

The album, In Rainbows, is released tomorrow as a download and you can pre-order a box set of double vinyl, double CD (including non-download bonus material), book, photographs etc etc for £40.

This has triggered debate in the office, as I'm sure it has in many other places.

The old school are arguing it will never take off as an idea because of the financial backing of a big labelled needed to make "quality" releases. But that doesn't take into consideration how the industry has changed over the last few years. Costs of recording albums have fallen through the floor, and high-quality recording equipment is now available at prices affordable to almost anyone. The upfront costs of making a recording can now be almost ignored apart from the most lavish of productions.

The public are also used to being able to get music free (illegally) and so want to see some justification for what they spend. Some people want to see lavish packaging to justify the price, others just want a crappy quality low-cost version that's good enough for listening to on headphones. Artists have to provide for both of these and everything in between (in this case the extremes are dealt with only). Considering how much you get with this Radiohead box the 40 quid seems like a good deal (even if Radiohead do bore the pants off of me and do very little that isn't recycling ideas from lesser known artists).

It's hardly a ground breaking idea; many people have done this already. Many vinyl only labels make all of their releases available for free as downloads (eg Clash / Kris as MP3s, there is another that gives away links to FLAC downloads with their vinyl but I can't remember their name right now).

However, I'm impressed to see such a big name doing it. Taking distribution away from the majors and allowing artists to connect directly to their fan base is the way forward. It's been working for Prince for years. The only thing the major labels can still contribute to this is the PR backing to break new artists, but increasingly artists can grow a fan base without that sort of financial backing through myspace or similar. The majors know this and hence every major band you can think of have an official myspace page in an attempt to retain credibility and to minimise exposure of lesser knowns. You wouldn't want an imitator getting your exposure now would you?

Other forms of media are going the same way, with journalism increasingly relying on bloggers. Just flick through any newspaper and note how much content is recycled from online material that is weeks old. It's rife from The Metro through to The Guardian. As Scott Adams predicted again last week:

"I also imagine the business model for bloggers changing. Now bloggers run ads and make money based on the traffic to their sites. In the future, I can imagine bloggers opting in for a system where they allow newspapers to grab their content any time the newspapers want, move it into the newspaper’s own content model on any given day, surround it with their own ads, and pay the blogger a percentage of ad revenue. In other words, every blogger (and cartoonist) would be self-syndicated, but newspapers wouldn’t print the same bloggers every day. They’d grab only the best writings of the day based on social voting and the newspaper’s own editorial opinions."

The same thing can happen with music. It is already the way many compilation / hits albums are put together, gathering lots of smaller labels / artists material together and reselling it under a larger brand.

You will never stop new talent emerging, regardless of how little financial reward is available. In fact, less financial reward would probably be a good thing for the industry. It will hopefully stem the flow of talentless wannabies and tabloid fodder (Doherty, Winehouse, the Gallergers et al.) that currently fill the media and the charts. If music is only being made by people who do it for the love of it, rather than people who see it as a business (see Pop Idol) then that can only be a good thing.

Artists have been experimenting with working out what they can charge for their work. The music industry is in turmoil and in another generation's time will be barely recognisable compared to what it was before. Asking the people who buy the music to pay what they think it is worth is a very brave move but a sensible step towards the new model.

Something vary similar is also happening with software. People generally dislike and distrust Microsoft, but continue to use their products due to their monopoly. They are regarded as a necessary evil now, but will they retain that position? There will always be an underground of users willing to make that extra bit of personal effort to get a product that does what they want rather than what someone else wants them to do with it. These are the GNU/Linux OS users, the people who want their music without DRM, and the people who would rather read and contribute to /., indiemedia, or thenewsisnowfree than any of the traditional news feeds.

Photography is similar. Some of the best photography I've seen in recent years has been on Flickr, published under CC licences by people who are happy to do it for the love of it rather than for the financial rewards (although many Pro photographers also use it to get exposure**). Thanks to this my own photography has been in the Schmapp! Travel guides to London, Bath, Liverpool, and Plymouth, and thenewsisnowfree network has used my photography of Bristol airport security, Bristol Kite Festival, and graffiti in a London hotel room. My pictures would never have got there any other way.
** Pun unintentional

Media and software alike should be made by the people, for the people. Not by corporations, for the profit. But you know that already. Otherwise I doubt that you'd be reading this.

Rant over.

Labels: Copyright, Media, Music

:: Dan 9.10.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I was searching YouTube a couple of weeks ago for some footage of Lyre Birds, as you do, and found that BBC Worldwide have a YouTube account full of some of the best of the Beebs output. They don't allow embedding, but it's a start. Very forward thinking of them, for such a huge and bureaucratic institution. I guess in such a large organistaion there are always going to be both forward and backward thinking people. Well done anyway, auntie. (I'm starting to sound like The Guardian, aren't I.)

Following that, even better news, the BBC Trust has given the nod to the BBC iPlayer. With cross platform support, including GNU/Linux promised in two years. They were going to use DRM on Windows so how are they going to work that on an open platform?

Channel 4 on demand ("4oD") already online. Warning: it tries to embed Spyware, my Spybot caught it.

Labels: Media, News

:: Dan 1.5.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"Is this the definition of petty?" asks Grom as BA cut a shot of Richard Branson and a Virgin Atlantic tail fin from the in-flight version of Casino Royale. On the one hand I don't have a problem with removing of product placement from films as I hate seeing it in there in the first place, and the Bond films in particular are terrible for it. But if individual corporations are editing their own cuts how long will it be before someone decides to start adding ads rather than just taking them away?

It's already possible; just watch any TV ad for products that go by a different name in the US. Along with the poor accent dubbing you'll also notice the product they are holding has a brand name or logo slightly altered and it doesn't quite track the movement properly. Frosties are the first example to come to mind for doing this. This practice is even more common in non-English speaking countries.

Newspapers are already seeing the benefits of more-valuable, better-targeted ads for online readers. How long before other media move the same way, with audience specific product placement? And at what point is artistic intent compromised? To be honest I think it has been already, but it's only going to get worse.

Labels: Media, News

:: Dan 23.4.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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