"Curator’s Code is an attempt to codify and standardize “via” links and attribution from link blogs and aggregators with two new symbols." "The inscrutability of these little symbols is irrelevant, because most writers aren’t going to use them. The problems with online attribution aren’t due to a lack of syntax: they’re due to the economics and realities of online publishing."

"The data is a privacy issue because we have an enormous ecological disaster created by badly-designed social media now being used by people to control and exploit human beings in all sorts of ways." "The thing you’re working on is simply one of 100,000 implications of that disaster."

"I contacted a friend of a friend, a smart and lovely editor at a high-profile women’s magazine that from time to time runs articles about strong women doing worthwhile work. Her reply was quick, honest, and upsetting: The magazine couldn’t tackle the palm oil issue head on, because half its advertisers were beauty companies guilty of destroying the very same forests."

"The key issue, as hinted at in the (somewhat facetious) examples above, is that the Metropolitan Police is a huge organisation: it has more than 35,000 officers and PSCOs, plus more than 13,000 civilian staff. Even trivial amounts of spending per officer quickly adds up." On spending at scale.

"What I really want is someone doing in-depth, well researched and written coverage of news events 1-4 weeks after the event. When all the details are known, and sifted, and analyzed."

"The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information." Who said Americans have no sense of irony?

Sure, base your headline on the pathological case of the highest rise, based on the withdrawl of a product (the excluding-zone-1 day Travelcard) that is bought by fewer people than use cash these days. I mean, the young person paper day Travelcard also rises by 50%, but who uses that? (Get Oyster, for heaven's sake.) Yet this 74% figure will stick, and be repeated (again) when the rises actually take effect in January. Sigh. One expects this nonsense of the Mail/Standard/Metro, but the BBC can and should do better.

"Delivering the 2010 Hugh Cudlipp Lecture today, Rusbridger said that universal charging for newspaper content on the internet would remove the industry from a digital revolution". There's some well-argued stuff in here.

"the Swiss Post (that's the postal service, not a newspaper) and the German tech startup Syntops are making it happen with their Personal News project. This is a small experiment, but a fascinating one that offers a mashup of section fronts from select newspapers in Europe and the U.S."

Warren Ellis: "Buried in the OMM's web presence, once a month, is a multimedia presentation by Morley. Not just a music column, but video of the interviews he conducted in support of the month's subject or theme, music files, filmed performances, and, most unsettlingly, a Flash file that places an immense screen-filling Morley as rambling disco ringmaster."

An interesting article by Peter Kirwan on the unmentioned waste (about 40% of magazines, 20% of newspapers) that the structures of industry seem to show up. It's odd that the "editor who allowed himself to be lured back" isn't named when the experiment mentioned is on their blog, though. (Once I'd have said who it was; I must be getting mellow.)

"Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura." Looks a good bet. That's question 60, ref 293006.

"Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found. The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret. The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck." Time to read Hansard...

"The defendants were offered £25,000 by The Sun for the pictures, taken on a Middleton family holiday on the Caribbean island of Mustique. But the pair turned it down, saying they wanted £50,000 for the photographs, and were then reported to police by the newspaper." Nice to see the Sun have a good set of values there, eh.

Phil on newspapers. Anyone can indeed regurgitate wire copy, but not everyone can write a spirited rebuttal like this.

Robert Peston on the wider journalistic practices behind the NOTW phone conversation affair. "In a series of reports and in evidence to the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee, [the retiring information commissioner] made a series of disclosures about newspaper activities that he regarded as "prima facie" illegal."

"The New York Times, via its reporters acting as proxies, steals documents. It violates laws that everyone else must follow. It uses the information in these documents to sell newspapers, and profits by it. And most important, it uses this process to exercise political power [..] The fact that the Times may commit this class of crime with impunity, while I can't and you can't, enables it (with the true press, of course, as a whole) to act as almost a sovereign force. [..] This is considered a normal and ethical practice in early 21st-century journalism. It is actually a criminal practice, which any other century would recognize as such." (Title shortened for space.)

The Press Complaints Commission upholds a complaint on the Express story that used Facebook details and photos of Dunblane survivors, stating that the use of information on social networks is only justified if the people are already public figures, and that "circumventing privacy settings to obtain information will require a public interest justification". It concludes "the breach of the Code was so serious that no apology could remedy it".

"The BBC's portrayal of a mortal threat, they say, is best understood as a negotiating ploy on the part of JCDecaux." This makes sense, I must say. I also liked Dan Hill's comment on the original BBC story: "It's public transport, not a profit-making enterprise. Funny how this crops up in a crunch."

Yes yes yes. This is what I was trying to get at in my commentary on the link I posted yesterday, but Tom's far more eloquent than I am: you don't need to code, you need to be able to think in terms of data, and how to use that to extract information (to misquote someone at Papercamp).

"You’d be able to knock up something like the Guardian BNP map without a second thought." I'd argue that you don't necessarily need to be able to code, but you do need to be able to use good tools; Excel and DabbleDB spring to mind (but aren't mentioned in the comments). (Note megp asking for Dopplr CSV exports so she can do her own visualisations.) Still, interesting thoughts.

On the Metropolitan Police's latest crime figures, showing 5-20% drops in knife and violent crime. "Some will dismiss them as nonsense, preferring to judge the state of violent crime in London on the basis of what they ... hear in the pub".

On BBC Two's White Season: "The BBC has made a grave error in locating the problems of Britain's poorest and most pressurised people in race rather than class." Sounds about right to me.

More LRB, so again a long, but worthwhile, book review, looking at the way the newspapers have become full of recycled PR instead of journalism.

Deeply depressing article on the coverage of the 2000 US election, and how the media laid into Gore and gave "the irresistable frat boy" an easy pass. Just because he'd have a drink with them.

Interesting thoughts on CMSes

Good article by Clive Thompson on Collision Detection, even if his reasons overlap somewhat.