• 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'
Comments? Email me.
Free daily newsletter
If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).
Related articles
- 'Lords review of media is in danger of achieving nothing'
- 'None of the papers have grasped the fundamental difference between the internet and print'
- 'Journalists are too often reduced to a cross between call-centre workers and data processors'
- 'UK offline media is one of the most competitive and creative in the world. You have to ask why that hasn't followed online'
- '40,000 citizen journalists working to report one story for your paper? It's possible, we did it'
