Phone hacking: social media is the new front line

Amid the hilarity contained in the news that the Metropolitan Police had lent Rebekah Brooks a horse, which led to the term #horsegate trending on Twitter, is a more serious point.

Well, actually there are multiple serious points, not least why the Metropolitan Police was lending livestock to the Chief Executive of a company it was supposed to be investigating? However, I intend, for the purpose of this blog, to concentrate on the media aspects.

There has been an orchestrated counter-attack over the last 10 days by the media establishment in the form of Michael Gove, current Education Secretary and former Times columnist; Trevor Kavanagh, former political editor of The Sun and Lord Hunt of the Press Complaints Commission. All have waded into the phone hacking debate and on-going Leveson Inquiry to criticise the Met’ for heavy handedness; accuse politicians of wanting a compliant media and Gove, in particular, accusing Leveson of creating a “chilling atmosphere” for the media to operate in.

I was privileged to be able to listen to Tom Watson MP at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham last week and, in the course of a fascinating evening, he gave some insight into what is going on at the moment. “The danger, “ he said “is not that the public will get bored of phone hacking, but that the media will.”

In other words, there is nothing News International and others in the national media would like more than for phone hacking to go away and leave the status quo, including a rebadged but still compliant Press Complaints Commission, intact. Hence the articles talking about ‘over-reaction’ and the potential ‘threat’ to a free press.

The national media though has form in this area. When the Guardian was the only newspaper running with phone hacking stories prior to the Milly Dowler furore, Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, was forced, according to Watson, to call in a favour from the editor of the New York Times to get the paper to investigate phone hacking in the UK. The result was the mammoth investigative reporting piece that ran in the ‘Paper of Record’ in 2010.

Is the same happening again? I believe the public remains interested in this story, aghast at the journalistic tactics used by News International and deeply worried about its relationship with the Met. Don’t believe me? Why else would #horsegate start trending?

If the nationals try to sit on this story again however, Watson plans a different tactic. In his own words, “we’ll use social media to get the story out to the wider public.” In the modern media age the national press is no longer the only source of supply.

PS: Watson remains convinced that “there is a lot more to come” in relation to phone hacking, payment of public officials and computer hacking, as events this week at Leveson have demonstrated. The one to watch though is the Tommy Sheridan perjury conviction appeal. I won’t go into the details here, but Watson is convinced that Sheridan will win his appeal which has potentially serious implications for a certain former News of the World editor who subsequently went on to work as Head of Communications for the current Prime Minister!

Sun on Sunday faces a big battle for readers

I note my learned colleague’s blog from yesterday and his cautious optimism for the Sun on Sunday’s success, but I think it is worth taking a rather more sceptical view. Veteran Fleet Street watchers, like Roy Greenslade, have declared that Rupert Murdoch has pulled a rabbit out of the hat, simultaneously getting Sun journalists back on board after talk of mutiny in the ranks and reinforcing his commitment to UK newspapers.

I’m not so sure. It could equally argued that this is a short-term fix designed to appease the Sun mutineers rather than a real commitment. However, I can see the business logic in narrow UK terms, in that the new paper has the potential to do ‘massive numbers’ (as media planners are quick to tell us) and Murdoch needs a big selling ‘Sunday’ to bankroll his other loss-making UK newspapers.

But, and this is the crux, strong interest from advertisers does not always turn into strong sales and readership. Despite lots of positive vibes coming from media planners and News International, I still think it is going to be an uphill battle to get the British public to go out and buy in big numbers.

Firstly, it is going to be very difficult to get back all of the NOTW’s 2.6 million readers in an overall market for Sunday newspaper reading which is in decline. In August 1991 national Sunday newspapers collectively sold an average of 16.2 million copies. By August 2001 this number had reduced to 13.6 million. By August of last year it had fallen it had fallen off a cliff to a mere 8.3 million.

What’s more, circulation figures from last year suggest that, as my learned colleague notes, that more than a million NOTW buyers appear to have vanished into thin air. They did not switch allegiance to the Sunday Mirror or The People or The Mail - they just left the market entirely.

Secondly, reaction from competitors is likely to be brutal in terms of price-cutting and other incentives, as those titles which benefited from the closure of the NOTW attempt to hang onto their gains. News International will launch with huge promotional activity, but all of this eats into profits and cannot be sustained over the long-term.

Finally, there is one other issue which is going to make life difficult for this successor to the ‘Screws’. The NOTW made its name exposing the antics of the rich and famous, but we now live in an era of super-injunctions which can stop an invasion of privacy in its tracks. What’s more, the newspaper industry is fully aware that the Leveson Inquiry is on-going and is on its best behaviour. It will take a very brave editor indeed to splash a typical NOTW scandal story, of the type that made its predecessors name, in the opening weeks of this new venture.

News International will be very gung-ho about this weekend’s circulation figures regardless of what happens, but the real proof will come in March, April and May as the market begins to settle down again. I’m no media buyer, but I suspect with a print run of three million, News International will be hoping for an opening weekend north of NOTW’s final circulation figure of 2.6 million. That is an awfully tall order to sustain once the initial excitement wears off.

Just how will The Sun set this Sunday?

So, the empire strikes back! Just when his back was against the wall, the old devil finds his elixir and comes out all guns blazing. What chutzpah! 

Yes, for those of you that haven’t heard, there is a ‘new’ Sunday tabloid in town (although how ‘new’ is probably up for debate). Media oligarch Murdoch has given an octogenarian’s last throw of the dice in what’s been a turbulent 12 months and announced the Sun’s highly anticipated Sabbath day edition. News Corps’ Sunday saviour will be hot off the press this weekend.

It might be worth comparing at this point, Murdoch’s bullish announcement that the Sunday Sun was on its way with that doddery appearance before the select committee last July. But alas, this is just an aside and I shan’t begin to assess Murdoch’s flourishing acting career. The real issue at hand is will the Sun on Sunday be the rip-roaring success it is being hyped up to be?

Inspecting the numbers, probably yes. It would appear that the News of the World's demise weakened the market overall. Of the News of the World's 2.67m sales, 1.3m simply disappeared. Half the rest went to the Sunday Mirror; the rest were split between the Daily Star Sunday and the People. Initial gains by the Mail on Sunday were rubbed out, although the Sunday Express made a little progress. Clearly media tycoon Murdoch has seen an opportunity to regain market leadership.

On the other hand however, and I could be wrong here, I’d imagine that a lot of the NOTW’s readers also turned more predominantly to online – real-time gossip from the glittering twitterati perhaps? It’s not just an online liberal coffeehouse you know! Similarly, the MailOnline hasn’t been doing too badly either.

Still, based on the numbers, the Sun’s promotional power and Murdoch’s resilient, death defying nature, I’d expect the Sun on Sunday to do rather well. There are more long-term issues at hand of course, like the growing revenue threat of social media and online news, and also the very necessary decontamination of News Corps’ brands.

As a PR person, I welcome the news of a Sun on Sunday and hopefully a revived Sunday newspaper market, but how long will it last in this form? When will social news become a genuine threat to traditional media’s revenue stream? I might be inclined to argue that it already is. As far as I can see, Twitter may not have pointless helpings of page three nudity, but this can be sourced elsewhere on the net, as Charlie Broker remarked last week, “on pages three to three billion and three.” 

This all leaves me thinking; in the long-term, will the Sun on Sunday not just be a bit outdated?

 

A triumph for social media (in Glasgow!)

For those who didn't get around to reading the Guardian's excellent article on Saturday about the phenomenal job done by the blog 'rangerstaxcase.com', I would urge you to make time to give it a read.

Even if you are not a football supporter, there is much to ponder on from the perspective of the performance of traditional media sources and in terms of the impact of social media.

It is a story with multiple themes; alienation of the traditional football fan; a perceived failure on the part of traditional media and the use of social media as a catalyst for the sharing of vital information amongst stakeholders.

For those who don't have the time let me summarise the story for you here. An anonymous football supporter, ironically not a Rangers supporter, got wind of the tax trouble that Glasgow Rangers was in, but could find no mention of it amongst traditional media outlets.

Instead, traditional media fed its readers, namely the club’s supporters, the usual stories including the building of a super casino and transfer gossip, including, apparently, a 'link' to the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo. The result was that many Rangers supporters had little clue that their club owed £70 million to HMRC until last week when it went bust.

In frustration, our anonymous hero set up a blog, 'rangerstaxcase.com', and started digging deeper. The blog has ‘broken’ a whole host of stories in relation to the case and now has a daily traffic of over 100,000 views with reader comments coming in at a rate of about 1,500 per day. Bear in mind that these people are not discussing football, they are discussing accounting conventions and insolvency law!

How did this happen? Our hero blames an unholy triangle of trade in which traditional media sources have got too close to the club and felt unable to cover the story for risk of losing their ‘access’.

For the record, I am fully aware of the role that PR has probably played in all of this. PR people at Rangers, let’s assume they were in the know, have been feeding these stories to traditional media outlets, in the guise of ‘doing their job’.

So what can we learn from all of this? Media owners from Rupert Murdoch down have blamed the internet for their woes, but this case begs the question whether certain sections of traditional media are giving readers the information they need and perhaps explains why so many are turning to alternative sources of information.

It must also be remembered that not all traditional media is scared of questioning itself. After all, I read this story in The Guardian. Kudos to them for running it!

Dave is throwing himself to the Lion!

The Prime Minister just got slapped down on the BBC.

It’s something I suspect we are going to have to get used to over the coming years.

Gordon Brown made a lot of mistakes, but he also got a lot right, bailing out the banks in October 2008 and not allowing Blair to join the Euro immediately spring to mind, but there is also another trap which he had the wiles never to fall into. He never, ever went up to Scotland and publicly took on Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, toe to toe!

The current Prime Minister is a confident man and the Number 10 Press Office has obviously felt able to trail his speech in Edinburgh today on the future of the United Kingdom and the Scottish Referendum on Independence with plenty of leaked soundbites.

He will say we are “stronger and richer together”. He will go on: “I think we have a fairer country, a better country, a richer country with all of us together. But I wouldn't ever threaten people in Scotland or say they can't do what they want to do. I'll just be appealing as someone who loves the United Kingdom, who loves our shared home."

All very nice, but then he makes a huge mistake that Salmond has already leapt on. "We’re stronger, because together we count for more in the world, with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, real clout in NATO and Europe and unique influence with allies all over the world."

Oh dear, oh dear. This is Salmond’s response, the words of a consumate politician who understands his electorate and their concerns. Read on or watch it HERE. I warn you from abourt 46 seconds in it is men against boys stuff!

“I was arguing about progressive policies, to bring jobs to the people and prosperity, he’s talking about being on the Security Council of the United Nations. Now no doubt that is important but believe me that doesn’t mean much to someone with disability or someone fearing the loss of benefits; a young person looking for a job in Scotland. I think the Prime Minister had better understand that Scottish politics is about a positive vision for the future; it’s about people not prestige.”

One nil to Salmond. At this rate it will all be over by half time.

Trend Setting

Until I attended Interiors UK last month at the NEC, I never really gave a lot of thought to who decides what trends will be trends and the importance of colour. I thought each magazine simple took inspiration from collection previews developed by interior design and homeware manufacturers and deciding what they liked best. And when it comes to deciding what colour is ‘in’ this season, I never knew so much discussion and analytics actually take place.

Twice a year, Global Colour Research brings together professionals from all design disciplines and from across the world to discuss what they have been inspired by and to agree a consensus on what common themes were emerging. It seems that ‘choosing a favourite colour’ is actually quite hard work.

According to Global Colour Research, colour is our way of communicating with and understanding the world and different colours have different representations and interpretations. Global Colour Research predict the key trends in colour for the year ahead, creating a colour palette for each trend and advising how to adopt this trend in design. At Interiors UK 2012 identified four distinct colour trends for 2012 / 2013 – Shanty, Ember, Tender and Bleep.

In a nutshell, here’s a guide to the colour concepts that will be shaping interior design this year and next:

SHANTY: Inspired by maritime, Shanty takes its cues from water with dramatic tones of red and indigo through to softy shades of algae and other sun-bleached colours. Think nautical stripes, rough finishes, driftwood, sea-worn glass and stone washed textures. Different washes of denim in particular are identified as a cross-industry trend right now so expect to see more of this within interiors.

EMBER: Influenced by the power of nature, the colours for this trend have been drawn from natural disasters and from the destruction and erosion of materials. There’s an autumnal feel to the colour palette – included tones such as Woodpile, Harvest Green, Carbon, Squash, Ash and a very powerful Red. Ember places emphasis on heavy, saturated colours and when it comes to interiors, Ember is about distressed finishes, raw luxury, after effects, melting materials to create a new effect, tarnished surfaces, scorched wood, lacquered coatings and charred metallics.

TENDER: Inspired by antique and vintage finishes and the Georgian period in particular, Tender’s colour palette includes a range of heritage colours such as mustard, pale green, blush pink and powder blue. Tender is all about handcrafted, beautiful details and draws upon the idea of faded beauty of finishes and materials, and has a very genteel, delicate style to it. Hand-rendered, craftsmanship and ornate details epitomise this look and it will be reflected in gathered silks, engraved jewels and mother of pearl.

BLEEP: The most playful trend of the four, Bleep is inspired by a love for retro technology and bright pop colours. Red alert, pulse yellow, blueprint grey, dark blue, white and mint green all make this a trend for those wanting to make an impact. Using a synthetic spectrum, Bleep encourages people to use the colours to direct people of draw attention to certain elements of design. Think layering colours, tinted acrylic, frosted glass, holograms and kaleidoscopes.

Four very different interior design trends, with a different appeal, but which one will take on in real people’s homes is the question.

Capello: The Media Pack has got what it wants!

The Capo has gone. His critics in the media have got what they've wanted all along. I woke up this morning to Dan Roan on the BBC telling me that his tenure as England manager will be judged a failure. Arch critic Henry Winter in the Telegraph can barely contain his excitement.

Various reasons are put forward for what, in the eyes of many in the football media pack, should be a moment of national rejoicing. His grasp of English wasn’t good enough (presumably to give them better quotes); he was always on holiday!

Facts are not allowed to get in the way of a good story. Only this week Sir Alex Ferguson came out and said he would never allow such interference in the dressing room as the FA has perpetrated in the last week. The fact that Capello’s win percentage is better than any other England manager, including Sir Alf Ramsey, is glossed over. Presumably too inconvenient to merit valuable column inches .

His resignation caps a fabulous afternoon and early evening for ‘the pack’. Yesterday, Harry Redknapp (“our ‘Arry”) was cleared of tax evasion charges leaving him free to take charge of “the biggest job in football”. The fact that he is a self-confessed semi-illiterate who has never sent an email is irrelevant. He played at West Ham with the Heroes of ’66, Bobby, Geoff and Martin, don’t you know!

Unfortunately, ‘the pack’ is even worse at picking the next England manager than the FA. Only 18 months ago Liverpool fans were being told that we were lucky to have Roy Hodgson and that we would have to hand him back to the nation when the England job next became vacant. Multiple internet statto nerds pointed out Hodgson’s shocking away game record at every club he’s ever managed but their cries went unheard until the Kop, with its team only just outside the relegation zone, started ironically chanting “Hodgson for England.”

My advice to Harry Redknapp is don’t go near the job with a barge pole. The ‘pack’ is fickle and it will turn on you when things go badly, and things will go badly. As I sat in front of the TV last night marvelling at another England football crisis I recalled the words of one of Don Revie’s assistants at Leeds United when Revie was considering taking the England job in the mid-1970s. “They [the England players] are not as good and not as dedicated as what you have here.”

There are multiple problems with English football from the way it is administered through to individual players. Unfortunately, the events of yesterday allow us to gloss over the problems once more.