Watch your language, Auntie

A rare “Wow, that’s a good story” moment found me reaching for my mouse to click through from a headline on the front page of the BBC News website this morning.”Coffee ‘increases pregnancy risk’”, it screamed (sic). No need for us chaps to rush to hide the Nescafé from our dearly beloveds though. Turns out the real risk is to use of language: the American scientific study on which the story was based found that caffeine increases the risk to a successful pregnancy (through miscarriage) - not the chances of creating one.

Journalism 2.0: a view from the other side of the pond

Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, delivered the Hugo Young Memorial Lecture in London last night. Inevitably he leaves us with more questions than answers about the Future of Journalism, but he makes his case with eloquence and élan. The full text is here.

A story actually worth reading about the McCanns

This impassioned piece about newspaper coverage and the public’s whispering campaign since the disappearance of Madeleine McCann by Kate Miller in The Scotsman is required reading. Written in response to the Daily Star’s truly, truly appalling ’story’ yesterday that Portuguese police were apparently, possibly, maybe, allegedly - at some point - investigating a theory that Kate and Gerry McCann sold their daughter Madeleine to bail themselves out of money trouble, Miller paints a depressingly accurate picture of how the McCanns’ vilification has become a national pastime - and why it must stop.  

Who says business can’t be sexy?

The Economist has figured out sexy can sell. The second issue of the magazine’s spin-off title Intelligent Life is out this week - and it boasts the publisher’s first fashion photo shoot in its 164-year history. Photographed by Mary McCartney (yes, daughter of Paul) the photographs illustrate a piece about jewellery as heirlooms. For fear of alienating some readers the expedition into the world of bling is counterbalanced with another spread on Chinese coal mines…  

Tears to a glass eye

The London Evening Standard has banned journalists from using taxis apart from in “exceptional circumstances” and will refuse to pay for meals with contacts unless they are proven to generate stories, according to MediaGuardian. As part of an expenses clampdown, effective immediately, editorial staff must get clearance before buying meals for contacts and, if authority is given, will need to stick to a £50 budget. An Associated Newspapers‘ memo also said journalists needed permission for the purchase of “more than a few drinks.” To be fair, the death of expense account financed second homes is long overdue so I’d drink to its passing - but fifty quid doesn’t go far in the watering holes around High Street Kensington. 

Kudos to Slight Clutter

It’s not every day I can say I am blown away by a photograph. But I stumbled across the work of Katya Horner (aka Slight Clutter) via Flickr, and I can’t stop looking at the image (below), which she entitles “That For Which I Am Thankful”. Kudos to Katya by the bucket load. You can see the rest of her portfolio here, her blog here and here for her commercial website. Enjoy. 

Quote of the day

“My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.” (Orson Welles)

Your country needs YOU - and your XBox

  Buried deep inside a feature about how the US Army is using a videogame to lure new recruits were some incredible ‘facts’. America’s Army is a free, realistic first-person shoot-em-up with online multiplayer capability designed by some of the world’s hottest games designers. What struck me was that for a mere $1.5 million a year to support the game the US Government says 28 per cent of players clicked through to the US Army’s recruitment site - and about 40 per cent of new US Army recruits in 2005 had played the game before signing up. Not a bad return for your money to attract Generation Y to plug the shortfall in the 80,000 new recruits it needs each year. Apart from the (PC compatible) online version the game is also now available for mobile phones, the XBox - and, for us GenerationXers a ‘coin-operated arcade machine’.