Our Executive Producer Peter Bale has penned a few mighty words about free content on the MSN portal. I’ve assembled some of our best features we’ve produced recently. Hope you enjoy taking a look.
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Why I find Politics boring
I have a confession to make – I haven’t a clue about politics. When it comes to issues about crime, immigration, unemployment, my eyes kind of glaze over – although I have developed this neat trick of looking extremely interested should I be sucked into a political conversation by mates or colleagues. It’s not that I just don’t give a damn about the people affected by these issues – it’s just the whole way we discuss these issues, using ‘charismatic’ spokespeople to represent their ‘party’ turns me off completely. We reduce complex issues to sound bites and eventually all we get is the lowest common denominator.
If you had millions in your pocket, how would you make politics interesting? I’m sure you could do it cheaper and with a lot more fun than what we’re currently being subjected to.
Ok rant over. Well, almost.
Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to attend a session with David Cameron and Gordon Brown as they presented their main policies for the UK election in May. Again, my eyes began to glaze over, but what I did appreciate is that these guys are exactly the same as they are on TV. Without a doubt, they are true leaders, it’s just what comes out of their mouth sort of reaches my ears but gets diverted just before accessing my memory database.
I need a way of engaging with politics that is more dynamic, more shocking, more fun and more real. I acknowledge that part of that might mean I need to take the step of actually reading up on the key issues of the moment and educating myself. I’m told I should feel privileged for having the right to vote but what I need is a new way to connect with the debate. It’s just that I haven’t seen this yet.
MSN Him channel launch
Drum roll. Brand new channel on MSN!
But this is not your typical ‘lads’ website. As MSN Him Content Manager Tom Evans writes: ‘One thing MSN Him does not have is tons of foxy girls wearing very little or indeed nothing; there is quite a lot of that on the internet already, as you may have heard. We love beautiful women as much as you do – and they will certainly not be totally absent – but this is a site you can enjoy at both home or work and in the latter case you won’t get a call from Big Brother over in IT.’
So no naughty photos of Cheryl Cole I’m afraid – but plenty of fun features about how to turn yourself into an Alpha male. Or read about Top action movie double acts. Or 10 most mysterious unsolved murders.
Visit the channel here.
Online news, online curation and Google Books
Yesterday three great things happened. Firstly, I became a member of the Online News Association. I don’t write news as part of my role here at MSN, but I have some involvement with the daily entertainment news desk which is run by our brilliant Senior Editor Colleen Last. There may be the whole debate about ‘is curation actually journalism’ but, as a publisher, we are still responsible for the the news we serve up, be it from PA or Reuters. So the same strict attention to detail is part of the process. Plus, visitors will always vote with their feet, or eyeballs if the news is late or lame.
Anyway, I’ve joined ONA to give me a further insight into the complexities of news reporting. I’ve only been to the one session so far with guest speaker Guido Fawkes, but that was good enough. I look forward to loads more interesting debates.
The second great thing that happened this week – Mike Ward, head of the Department of Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, visited us. It was good to exchange questions and get a little closer to the issues he is involved in. At MSN I’ve taken for granted the multi-tasked nature of our roles. We don’t have the formal structures that, say, a newspaper might adopt in an online team. If a team member has the talent (or inclination) then they might be writing blogs, shooting and editing video, recording podcasts, scripting shows etc. Does this produce a Jack of all trades master of none? I think it encourages editors to think about the different ways they can tell a story with the tools that are available to them. But, Mike certainly got me thinking about the expectations we place on journalists to get the job done.
Lastly, in the evening I attended a session on ‘Google and the Digitisation of Books’ organised by the Stationer’s Company. Here, Santiago de la Mora discussed Google’s strategy in this area and details around the Google Book settlement issue. Very interesting and left me with the following questions:
- Will the settlement result in Google actually getting a copyright agreement passed into US law?
- Will Google start to charge for these books?
- Will Google adopt a DRM approach to digitalisation? If so, look what DRM did for the music industry with disastrous consequences.
- Will Google start providing a commercial digitalisation service where companies can use their technology, but not their distribution network?
So, there you go. Three great things. All I need to do is top that today and I’ll be lined up for an excellent weekend. Until next time.
MSN Music Interviews…rock!
Did you know that we run loads of fantastic interviews on MSN Music? If there’s a band out there that you think we should interview just let us know.
Online News Association with Guido Fawkes
On Tuesday I was lucky enough an event organised by the Online News Association, this time with guest speaker Guido Fawkes aka Paul Staines. What an amazing career this guy has had reporting on the latest shenanigans of our beloved politicians. Puts me to shame really with how little I know about politics – I’d better sort it out!
Interesting point he made about political reportage being a bit like trade press. Its social commentary is often blunted by being too close to its subject, sources and advertisers.
Also interesting: is ‘data journalism’ real journalism? And is ‘curation’ really just another word for editing?
Twitter feed of the evening
Live blog by Dan Davies
Live blog by Brian Condon
Photos by Katie King
Visit the Guido Fawkes blog
MSN Entertainment: Best of 2009 podcast
What a year. Looking back, you couldn’t have predict any of it but you could always rely on the ol’ MSN Entertainment team to bring it to you in all its variety of colours, shapes and sizes. Hope you enjoy the podcast.
And here’s to 2010!
Avatar takes over MSN UK
With Avatar now in cinemas we have a new homepage takeover by Fox studios. I think it’s the best one we’ve had so far. Really slick action – click the MPU or banner, the MSN homepage slides down to reveal a video player where you can watch the trailer in HD. Click other options and the homepage slides to the left so you can dig deeper into text and images. Lovely.
MSN Movies: 2010 Preview
Take a look at the clipping below. Innocent isn’t it? Just a bunch of movies submitted and carefully curated by our amazing MSN Movies Editor Ed Holden.
Think again.
Last week this little beauty racked up more than 5 million page views over 24 hours making it one of the fastest performing features on MSN UK, ever. It’s just mind-boggling when you can get that amount of traffic in such a short space of time. And it’s a great feature by our columnist Paul Arendt.
Have a peek here:
The Massive 2010 movie preview
Jeremy Clarkson on MSN Cars
You may not have seen our World of Jeremy Clarkson special that we have running in MSN Cars at the moment. Apart from detailing everything you could possibilly want to know about ‘he of tight denim’, it also features a fantastic question and answer interview the MSN Cars team threw at him.
I love the relentlessness of this video. It starts sensibly enough, but as the questions become more leftfield you can almost see Jeremy thinking ‘oh my god, what’s coming next?’
Nice one to the Cars team for putting this together.
(click on image below to launch video clip)
