Online Journalism News

News round-up: Times unravels more blogger mischief

• Times Online have uncovered the mystery of 'Alastair Campbell's' blog. It's run by 30-year-old Anna Corp who works in marketing for an online bookmakers - a lady with a natty way with (Alastair Campbell's) words.

She got lucky with the 'bloody BlackBerry' incident which happened a few days after she started the blog: "This was my Rosetta Stone, if you like, and from it I was able to get a feeling for Campbell’s prose style. He strips the language down to its bare bones, then chucks in a few swear words."

• The IAB (the people that always tell us about the online advertising boom, boom and boom...) have a new chief exec and he's rebranding the organisation the 'Internet Advertising Bureau'. After 100 days in the job, Guy Phillipson has published a five-point plan for the future of IAB which aims to push the industry over the £1 billion mark. More on the IAB site.

• And CNET News reports that Google is experimenting with ads in blog feeds. Understandably, web publishers are keen to explore ways to increase revenue - and it's inevitable that our lovely pure, simple headline-only news feeds will start to be bogged down with ads. Ho hum.

• NetMedia's Milverton Wallace has written a chunky piece about digital literacy for the new Hungarian site Freeside Europe. If you want to know how to communicate with all those iPod-addicted youngsters, it will probably help.

• The Guardian reports that Qatar is considering selling off the Al-Jazeera network. That might be of particular interest to any UK journalists being headhunted by Al-Jazeera, as a privatised station is likely to be far more conservative in its coverage.

• Finally, I had a press release in this week from the Newspaper Society and when I scanned the headline I read it as: "Cheeky loo paper makes the most of the newspaper medium." Just when I thought they'd finally done something useful with all those unread local newspapers, I realised it was actually: "Cheeky loo paper ad makes the most of the newspaper medium."

What a difference an 'ad' makes...

More news from dotJournalism:
Crusading journalist wins role against Al-Jazeera
Alastair Campbell tells BBC to 'fuck off'

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