Present Tense »

• Some weekend reading and listening

  May 23, 2008 @ 4:15 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Have a good weekend, everyone.

  What would the universe look like in time ran backwards, asks Scientific American.

  Slate.com on the perils of running for US President if you have an unusual name.

  While climate change litigation be the class action of the future?

  The New York Times looks at the book 1001 Books To Read Before You Die and suggests that “death might come as a relief”.

  The blog Positive Boredom has some fine ideas. None of which succeed, but he shouldn’t let that put him off.

  I had meant to link to the Sky One Lost Initiative podcast earlier in the week. It really is top class. You can subscribe to it through the website here.

  Here’s some White Denim.
  

• Saturday column: Pictures and lies

  May 19, 2008 @ 9:36 am | by Shane Hegarty

  THE NEW YORKER magazine has just run a fascinating profile of Pascal Dangin, the fashion and publishing worlds’ most sought-after retoucher of photographs.

  In the March issue of Vogue alone, he “tweaked” 144 images: 107 ads, 36 fashion pictures and the cover. From his desk, he splices skyscapes, changes the colour of the sky, makes the grass more grassy and gives actresses digital boob jobs, knee lifts and neck transplants.

  “Maybe we could redo the ass,” a photographer suggests. “Yes, the ass is quite heavy,” Dangin replies. (more…)

• Reading the newspaper, but forgetting which one

  May 14, 2008 @ 10:19 am | by Shane Hegarty

  I’d been meaning to return to a comment made by Bolg a couple of weeks ago, who wrote:

  I read an article this morning (can’t remember where – Guardian? NY Times?) about Lynndie England et al…

  As it happened, the piece was in The Irish Times. This isn’t to point the finger at Bolg, but only to use it as an example of a growing problem facing the media. In an age in which people graze the papers, television, internet, magazine and radio, they will pay less attention to where exactly they got the information. They will absorb information, but not always remember the source. They are bombarded with media, or have a range from which to choose. But these are often carrying similar content, making it a cherry-picking exercise for the readers, who do not have to be “loyal” to anyone other than their own interests.

  I may be generalising from one example, but it’s an interesting conundrum for editors (and a frustrating one for me as I worked on that page on which the England piece appeared). But it offers a reminder of why opinion will continue to be a greater factor in how newspapers, especially, sell themselves. The Sunday Independent may be an infuriating publication but it has been successful because it established itself early on as being unique in its voice. Other Sunday papers face a struggle to mark themselves as different from the supplement-heavy Saturday papers, but the Sunday Independent is already in a position to protect itself from that problem. It largely ditched news in favour of opinion, but it is clearly distinguishable from its competitors because of it.

• Saturday column: Hopelessly Lost in Lisbon

  April 26, 2008 @ 8:04 am | by Shane Hegarty

  EVERY ONCE IN a while an issue comes along that is of great importance to the State and its citizens, which must be discussed openly and about which the people will ultimately have their say.

  But which just happens to be so dry that people’s eyelids involuntarily droop at the very mention of it, their brains rebel 30 seconds into every debate, and their breath quickens when anyone asks them for their opinion. Because they realise that, yes, it’s a terrifically important issue – it just happens to be really hard to pay attention.

  You’ll have guessed by now that this is a column about the Lisbon treaty. (more…)

• Saturday column: The percentage game

  March 30, 2008 @ 7:05 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  IF YOU picked up a copy of Metro or Herald AM on your way to work on Wednesday morning, you would have learned this stunning statistic: almost half of women love doing the washing-up.

  What’s more, 70 per cent dream of a pampering experience, such as a spa break or a manicure, as they are doing the washing-up.

  And who brought you this vital research? Fairy washing-up liquid.

  Surely this was done as a bet by a marketing man, insisting to his naive colleagues that no matter how ridiculous, how un-newsworthy, how skewed, how obviously a survey is an advert disguised as “news”, that he would be able to get it into the papers? But there it was, accompanied in Metro by a big picture of Fairy’s new “hands” model.

  So what, you might think. It was a jokey survey in a tabloid freesheet.

  Yes, but the brand got itself a cheap ad, potentially seen by millions of commuters across Ireland and Britain. It’s good going for a washing-up liquid, and sets the bar a little higher for those PR companies who use surveys to get column inches. And that’s pretty high, because the bar has been going up a notch almost every day since the mid-1990s. (more…)

• Britney-hunting

  March 26, 2008 @ 12:24 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Always look forward to getting my copy of The Atlantic Monthly, which I still have a subscription too despite it dropping it’s website paywall. Thanks to the vagaries of the postal system, it’s always a surprise when it lands – two might arrive together, one might land before it’s even been printed, that sort of thing.

  Anyway, this month’s issue has a good piece on the paparazzi’s hunting of Britney Spears. It focuses largely on one agency, X17, and the way the business has:

  Nearly every famous picture of the world’s most famous imploding pop star—Britney driving with her son on her lap, Britney in rehab, Britney without underwear, Britney shaving her head—was taken by X17’s “shooters,” or “paps,” who work in teams under the direction of X17’s owner, François Navarre, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, who moved to Los Angeles in 1992 and covered the L.A. riots for Le Monde before embracing his destiny as a freelance celebrity photographer. Navarre operates under his middle name, Regis. He is roundly despised by more traditional Hollywood paparazzi, who accuse him of having destroyed their highly individualistic business by hiring gangs of immigrant kids with digital cameras purchased on credit from Best Buy to do the work of the heroic lone photographers who once lay in wait with telephoto lenses, stalking Jackie O.

  Most of X17’s paps, who number between 60 and 70, depending on the day and who quits or gets fired, are paid a stipend of $800 to $3,000 a week plus the occasional four- or low-five-figure bonus in exchange for global rights to their images, which Regis owns lock, stock, and barrel. X17 also pays weekly stipends to a dozen dedicated tipsters and occasional fees to 500 or 600 parking-lot attendants, club kids, and shop girls in and around L.A.

  The site also has a separate article in which the guys from X17 give a commentary to some of their pics of various celebs:

  I think the one with the best chance to rebound and become interesting for the camera again is Britney. She’s down right now, but that’s because she’s on such hard medication. I’ve never seen her drugged as much as now . She reminds me of my grandmother in France who had Alzheimer’s. She can barely walk. She walked straight into a pole the other day.

• All these journalism courses must mean a higher standard of writing … right?

  March 19, 2008 @ 10:10 am | by Shane Hegarty

  In the past decade or so there has been a proliferation of journalism courses. They are everywhere, ubiquitous, viral. As noted some time ago, the Irish Academy of Public Relations started one, meaning that the alien had finally burst from the chest of journalism.

  But here’s the thing: with so many graduates being pumped out of so many courses, has the standard of journalism improved? Are there better writers in Irish newspapers or magazines? Are the unqualified dinosaurs being put to shame by these hordes of Woodward and Bernsteins?

  For those interested in broadcast journalism, a course must be of some use in grappling with the technical demands and perhaps learning how to be comfortable on air. Although, here too the standard doesn’t seem to have improved noticeably. There are still too many moments when you turn on RTÉ radio or television and wonder if a transition-year student has been accidentally given a chief reporter’s job.

  Courses are helpful for an introduction to the law, to shorthand, to subbing, to deciding what end of the business a person wants to go into. And they definitely helpful in getting a foot in the door for those looking for sub-editing shifts in newspapers, or researcher jobs on radio or television, although experience quickly becomes an asset that outweighs the qualification.

  But, in my experience, good journalists are often the ones who have had a different life other journalism, who bring something unconventional to their writing, who learned their trade on the job, and by reading (and learning from) a lot of others writers.

  I’m not saying that talented journalists don’t come out of the colleges, but I’d be willing to bet that they were talented when they first went in. When students come into the office on work experience, you can almost always spot the smart ones immediately, and they always have qualities which they clearly didn’t learn in a lecture hall.

  Decent news reporters tend to have an intuition for a story and a strong work ethic. All good writers – news and features – have an innate skill with the language. They know how to inject personality in their writing; to act as a prism for a story; to entertain and inform. Can you really teach all of this? I don’t know. But I haven’t seen it yet.

• Prince Harry and media complicity

  February 29, 2008 @ 6:09 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  The news that Britain’s Prince Harry was fighting “Terry Taliban” in Afghanistan has triggered some debate about the media’s role in keeping it secret. There has been some criticism from the British public. The flipside, meanwhile, was ITN’s News at Ten, which featured a hilariously bitter report by Tom Bradby (“clever Mr Drudge … that’s just brilliant, then”).

  Here’s the executive director of the UK’s Society of Editors explaining its decision to comply with the blackout, and here’s a similar piece from the BBC.

  The BBC’s editor explains that “a news black-out is unusual, but not unique” and uses the example of a kidnapping, in which reporting is suspended during negotiations. That’s not a great example, given that he could have used the fact that whenever George W Bush or Tony Blair/Gordon Brown or a handful of their ministers have visited either Afghanistan or Iraq, despite the obvious news value in flagging such an event it is only reported afterwards.

  As it happens, blackouts, of a sort, are commonplace in the media. Embargoes are rampant. There are embargoes preventing the early review of books sent by publishers, embargoes on movie interviews and embargoes on press releases. (The Booker Prize, for instance, is announced to journalists before writers, so that they can hit their deadlines.) So, this is an industry well used to keeping secrets, and colluding with people far less important than royalty, and for reasons far less important than the life of a soldier.

• A redesign of The Irish Times

  February 25, 2008 @ 10:26 am | by Shane Hegarty

  The paper’s changed this morning, both in its look and with the addition today of a new photographic supplement and an extra page of opinion and analysis.

  Any thoughts?

• A cautionary tale for editors, bloggers and middle-class backpackers

  February 15, 2008 @ 1:08 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  19-year-old, middle-class, Skins-scriptwriting Max Gogarty decides to head to India for a bit of gap fun. He blogs about it on the Guardian website. The readers give him a hammering, while unearthing the fact that he appears to be the son of another Guardian contributor. Much hilarity ensues, for everyone but Max and his dad. Nathan Barley gets mentioned a lot. And the editor, who commissioned the piece thinking it would be a regular bit of whimsy that would connect with the backpacking masses, has a bad day at the office.

  A sample comment:

  Here’s an idea, Max.

  Instead of setting off on yet another inane, identikit trip around Asia before you take up your place at Oxbridge (or wherever), why don’t you leave your family’s Highgate mansion FOR GOOD, cut yourself off from your father’s allowance, move into a council estate in Salford, STAY THERE, and then consider writing a blog about your experiences.

  Why does our society only grant a voice to those with nothing to say?

  P.S. Are you Paul Gogarty’s son?

  (as spotted on Dan’s blog)

• Trapattoni, O’Brien, Bertie and RTÉ

  February 13, 2008 @ 6:57 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  First, RTÉ Radio 1 cut the FAI press conference early, which was frustrating in itself. Then Drivetime’s Mary Wilson went to an interview with Denis O’Brien, whose modesty does not stretch to preventing himself from going on the national airwaves to admit that it was, indeed, he who has quietly come to the rescue of Irish soccer. No strings attached. The thanks of the Irish people will be enough. Adoration would be a bonus. OK, then, you may kiss his ring.

  (By the way, at the press conference it was suggested that O’Brien hasn’t done it for match tickets. I’m guessing that, should he want to, he can already watch the match from behind bulletproof glass, while being fed champagne and caviar by women dressed in nothing but 1988 Irish jerseys.)

  But from there, Wilson went to the only man more likely to somehow turn this great moment for Irish soccer into a personal triumph – Bertie Ahern. Why ask Bertie what he thinks? Because he’s An Taoiseach Jimmy Rabbitte.

  And in fairness to him, he showed once again that he has a future in football punditry by spouting dull cliche with the verve of a pro. Thank you RTÉ for giving us the chance to hear his forgettable platitudes.

• God is dead: full story on page 24

  @ 11:56 am | by Shane Hegarty

  I’m well-disposed towards Humanism, but the new magazine launched yesterday doesn’t appeal to me. I’m wondering if it’s just because of its title. When browsing the shops, will you really be enticed by a copy of the gleaming Humanism Ireland? They should have appealed to a higher power on this: a brand manager, or PR guru, that sort of person. They would have suggested alternative titles, such as:

  - God Is Dead. We Have Killed Him. Yay!
  - Hellbound Monthly
  - Go God Go

• Getting a new byline picture

  February 12, 2008 @ 2:43 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Every so often in here, we need to get a new byline picture done. Today’s that day.

  It’s no fun. If you get that expression wrong, it will haunt you every time you open the paper. You don’t want to be a guffawing idiot alongside a piece about one woman’s battle against the disease that wiped out her entire family. Nor do you want to be too miserable. So, in order to find a decent medium, you aim for a half-smile, not-too-jokey, but-not-depressing contortion. Which only makes you look as if you’ve been told to “act natural” by a man pointing a gun to your head.

  Besides, people never look like their byline pictures. There is a running debate among colleagues about who looks least like their byline picture. There is one reporter who would only be less like his photo if it was replaced by a picture of a small gazelle. (more…)

• A Chianti would go well with those drug-filled balloons

  January 30, 2008 @ 5:06 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Hot Press has a drugs issue out this week, so it’s made an ad for it. With balloon swallowing, Eastern European accents, graphic toilet scenes and coke being snorted off cleavage, it may in fact be a clever trailer for a Roaring Twenties spin-off.

  Watch it here. (Thanks Ivor for the tip)

  WARNING: Make sure you’re not eating while you watch it. You may laugh so hard that food will come out your nose.

• How every column should be from now on

  January 4, 2008 @ 2:30 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  I urge you to stop whatever you are doing and go and read Alexander Chancellor’s column in today’s Guardian. It is an eye-wateringly honest account of a disasterous Christmas during which his scrotum was punctured by a whippet. No, really: (more…)

• Selection box

  December 21, 2007 @ 11:09 am | by Shane Hegarty

  The questions that Slate’s ‘Explainer’ didn’t answer this year.

  Shock news: some, but not all, people Google themselves, and other people

  The Onion cuts to the chase on the whole Harry Potter nonsense.

  P Diddy’s perfume is called Unforgivable Woman. Rejected alternatives: “Fallen Woman” and “Harlot”.

  Time may be running out. Literally.

  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have had enough of the writers’ strike and are going back on air.

  Will Smith’s next movie is I Am Legend (read the book, it’s brilliant). Then it’s a “homeless superhero” flick that’s likely to be pretty terrible.

  Dublin looks very well today and this makes it look positively funky (I posted it in July, but I can show it now, so up it goes).

  (more…)

• Errors of 2007

  December 20, 2007 @ 7:06 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Not mine, although we all make mishtakes. Not the newspaper’s, although we do have the odd glitch. But the errors of the world’s media, as compiled into one compelling (and for hacks, very scary) list by the excellent Regret The Error. Which itself has four corrections appended to the list of hilarious corrections.* Oh, the irony.

  It’s Correction of the Year comes from the Independent (UK version):

  Following the portrait of Tony and Cherie Blair published on 21 April in the Independent Saturday magazine, Ms Blair’s representatives have told us that she was friendly with but never had a relationship with Carole Caplin of the type suggested in the article. They want to make it clear, which we are happy to do, that Ms Blair “has never shared a shower with Ms Caplin, was not introduced to spirit guides or primal wrestling by Ms Caplin (or anyone else), and did not have her diary masterminded by Ms Caplin.”

  (more…)

• Your one-stop shop for Irish media facts and figures

  December 13, 2007 @ 1:49 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  It’s not the funkiest, or most user-friendly site, but Medialive.ie is a handy one that seems to go under the radar a bit. It’s useful for up-to-date Irish television ratings, JNLR figures and newspaper and magazine circulation details and advertising rates for everything from cinemas to billboards.

  So, for the fact fans:

  .. The Santa Clause 2 (part 2) was the most watched programme among children in 2006 (111,000 of the little blighters tuned in – 10,000 more than watched the first half. Strange.) (more…)

• Emily O’Reilly and the “21st century bloodsport”

  December 11, 2007 @ 10:46 am | by Shane Hegarty

  Emily O’Reilly’s last couple of years have been marked by occassional headline grabbing speeches about the state of modern Ireland that could – were you so minded – be construed as part of an early run for the Presidency.

  Yesterday, launching new journalism courses in Limerick, she took a swipe at the media. And she had a point. (more…)

• Cocaine

  December 10, 2007 @ 1:23 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Jim’s jaw reacted in pretty much the same way as mine yesterday morning when Bill Cullen’s appearance on Marian Finucane’s show brought pearls of wisdom grabbed straight from the open gob of some mouthy taxi driver. But it was one of those weekends during which a lot was said about cocaine. Some of it was educational (such as the A&E doctor on Finucane’s show), some of it allowed Prime Time get a plug for tonight’s programme, but little of it was constructive. Only Kevin Myers on the Sunday Supplement offered anything when he suggested – as he, and others, have done many times before – that we should at least legalise drugs to take them out of the hands of criminal gangs. (more…)

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