Barclays Capital have appointed a Jane Privett to their credit sales team. Presumably she will be dealing with hedge funds.



He was probably high at the time. But good news for the paper's circulation department, I guess...



And hey, while you're laughing (sort of) give this a whirl.... that'll teach you.

Eric Alterman in The Nation explores the whole "are bloggers journalists?" debate in the context of the Eason Jordan fallout, and how MSM's problem has been its irresistible tendency to feed into its own misfortune.

Excerpt:

Moreover, while the MSM machers have traditionally played the role of gatekeeper, keeping malevolent nuts out of the public square, they have undeniably fallen down on the job of late. It was on CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer that the satanic spawn Ann Coulter was invited to giggle about how nice it would be if the US military really were deliberately murdering journalists.



Nice piece in the Post today about the spreading influence of iPod culture - funny how even the name now is synonymous with MP3/digital music players regardless of the actual origin of the hardware.

On a related note, this is one of those sorts of services mentioned in the piece. Slightly worrying, however, that among the testimonials is:

"It felt like Alessandra had a psychic connection to my soul, rather than just the information she'd gathered from our consultations"

Yikers!



Further to yesterday's note on registration for premium sites, and whether subscribers were actually being penalised by being unable to share links to content behind the wall, check out BugMeNot.com which encourages the sharing of registration/sign-in information as a way of getting around just that problem.

Also take a look at the interesting discussion over at Poynter on the ethics of it all.



And talking about penalising online subscribers relative to the print edition, Linda informs me that the story of the by now legendary skiing nuptials was accompanied in dead-tree form by a photograph of the protagonists going downhill fast, as it were...

(and in any case, weren't they an '80s punk band? The Legendary Skiing Nuptials?)


And, yes, snowing again. Not here, though... (sigh...)


I might even be able to brave the snow for lunch here today, however...

Another interesting piece by Adam Penenberg in Wired.

Absolutely agree with his point about archiving and search engine presence - we have the same problem - against the need to preserve the "premium" nature of the subscription product.

His point about the ability of a subscriber to share references, either in blog or email form, is also something we've wrestled with. It's a measure of the changing expectations of both news producers and consumers that there weren't these sort of debates when dead-tree editions were worried about their readers photocopying articles and circulating them in a clip service... maybe that should be the model?


Talking of premium content, you have to be a NYTimes subscriber to access this, but trust me, it's worth it....


And we're surprised by this why, exactly?

Snowing again.... bet it isn't here. (Sorry, am just going to post these links every day as a form of self-flagellation).


Spam update:

For some reason, in between the ads for Cialis and "It's the Hair, Dude", I seem to have somehow slipped onto the mailing list for these people. Talk about a skewed demographic.

Fascinating stuff, though, in a strangely compelling, watching-a-car-wreck kind of way. And frankly, if this isn't a sign of the end times, I don't know what is...

Cubes makes another three-point shot.

excerpt:

"Its payback time . The bloggers are here, and they are ready to knock down the gates and get their pound of flesh. The traditional media has no idea what is about to hit them.

In every major conference, at every major speech, sitting at tables in restaurants, there is going to be a blogger or podcaster with microphone, PDA, Videophone, laptop or paper and pencil in hand. Listening. Taking notes. That information is going to be transmitted to and from a blog entry and placed in the hands of “the readers”.

Unlike celebrities who hear or see the flash of the camera, the gatekeepers don’t know they are there. Blogging in plain site. Questioning everything.

Dan Rather and Eason Jordan were just practice laps. Let me assure you that from now on, EVERYTHING said. Every video shown. Every picture presented from any traditional media source is going to be scrutinized. The level of scrutiny will make your editors blush.

The gatekeepers are under attack. I’m not saying its right or wrong, but it is the new reality."


All good stuff, but isn't that what MSM should be doing?

a propos of nothing.... this is a nice piece of writing from a while back.

Would you believe I stumbled on it after doing a Google search for a sweet stand called "E Pluribus Mmmmm" that I knew was at the MCI Center in DC. The fact that this was the only reference tells you all you need to know, I guess.


Elsewhere, am excited that everyone's favourite grumpy ol' dude is coming to town.

This is great, by the way.

One of those instances where you know someone needs to get a life, but you're really, really glad they decided to do this first...

This, too, is utterly awesome.

Interesting piece in the latest Time magazine about US negotiations with Iraqi "insurgents" (and I'm still not entirely comfortable with that phraseology - doesn't the word itself imply foreign rather than domestic fighters? Instead, it's most commonly used as a catch-all for "anti-occupation forces").

(NOTE: I stand corrected - turns out the word in most definitions refers only to those "rising in active revolt")


excerpt:

"Although they have no immediate plans to halt attacks on U.S. troops, they say their aim is to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis and eventually negotiate an end to the U.S. military's offensive in the Sunni triangle. Their model is Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which ultimately earned the I.R.A. a role in the Northern Ireland peace process. "That's what we're working for, to have a political face appear from the battlefield, to unify the groups, to resist the aggressor and put our views to the people," says a battle commander in the upper tiers of the insurgency who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Marwan. Another negotiator, called Abu Mohammed, told TIME, "Despite what has happened, the possibility for negotiation is still open."


Their choice of the IRA as a role model is telling - does that mean that they perceive a lack of political will for a protracted involvement on behalf of the US?

Just as Gerry Adams was able to exploit a desire on the part of successive British governments to "solve" the Northern Ireland problem by means of a negotiated, staged disengagement; have the Iraqi rebels - through whatever limited diplomatic contact - been made aware that the US wants to withdraw and save face in the short-to-medium term?

And interesting also that the motivations for both occupying forces to disengage was at least in part economic, rather than political. And what about that part of the population the occupying forces are theoretically "protecting"?

Let's see....

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro"

Somehow, deep down, his audience always knew it would end like this....

"You're a whole different person when you're afraid."



Well well... The latest salvo in the culture wars, or just a bit of fun for sweeps week? You be the judge.



It was snowing today in London. Three guesses where I'd rather be?

(by the way, that not so secret note: here's the second guess.)