steven.vu

The Independent relaunch; a party ‘free from party political ties’ and ‘free from proprietorial influence’

I love newspapers. Personally I read the Guardian, not because of any political leanings, but more for the format. I can’t get enough of the Berliner format and their Egyptian slab serif font, aptly named, “Guardian,” which was designed by non other than Christian Schwartz.

When the Independent have their typographic wet dreams on the front page, I sometimes flit over to them. I’m easy like that.

Things have gotten slightly more difficult with the Independent relaunch though. They’ve included a “Viewspaper,” for opinionated commentary and an ironicly named sombre font called “sun.” They’ve also gone all Web 2.0 on us, with a bloody twitter page, facebook fan page, iPhone app and Chrome extension. Isn’t RSS enough?

People are pretty split over the new design. It’s pretty similar to what happaned with the Guardian in 2005.

At the time, the Independent had this to say:

It is the masthead that grates most of all. Gone is the Garamond (which was intended to signal stylish features) and the Helvetica (hard news) and in their place is a blue and white logo in a font dubbed “Guardian Egyptian”. Hillman says the new look reminds him of “cheap newspapers and freebies”. – Why the new Berliner gives me the blues

The Guardian, this time round, seemed to pat Indy on the back. How nice. Michael Crozier, who redesigned the Indy a few of times, in 1986, 1993 and 1998 wasn’t as pleased:

In the redesigned, re-configured, paper news seems once again to have taken a backwards step – it’s comment and opinion all the way with the new 20-page pull-out Viewspaper section.

Time will tell whether it was a wise move.

My parents actually read the Daily Mail, which strikes some as odd – seeing as they’re immigrants – but the answers pretty obvious. It straddles the middle ground between the bare bosoms of the sun and the terse dense script of any sensible paper. It’s all about the 8 words per line average you see.

The relaunch ties in neatly with the Murdoch’s bitching and whining that they backed the wrong horse. The Kill Klegg campaign wasn’t working and after the Independent accused them of rigging the election, team Murdoch apparently stormed into the Independent and had a row. The rows were over these excellent viral adverts. They should buy some space on the TV and plaster billboards with them.

Intelligence Squared – Future of news | Why did I pay £25 to go to the event, knowing I could stream it live?

I went to a discussion hosted by Intelligence Squared called the future of news.

And that, so they tell us, is the end of the news. We won’t be buying newspapers any more to learn what’s happening in the world because we can get that information at no cost on the net, and without having to trek to the newsagent. We won’t be hearing from serious journalists any more: how can they earn a living if any old blogger can lift their expensively-crafted articles and post them on his own site?
–Future of news

Speakers: Matthew Parris, Turi Munthe, Claire Enders, Jacob Weisberg, David Elstein, A A Gill, Andrew Neil, Sir Simon Jenkins

I’ve never really been to an event of this sort, but am interested in media and thought it’d be worthwhile. The problem with it all was that there was no debate. Each speaker came to the podium and rambled about what they thought of media and where it was going. They should have just got Charlie Brooker to read out his article “The most dangerous drug isn’t meow meow. It isn’t even alcohol,” over the phone.

I was hoping the event would reveal the answer to why I paid £25 to go to the event, knowing full well that I could stream it live at home.

On serious journalism

The speakers didn’t appeal to me. If all of them had a blog would I read them? Maybe a couple. Columnists and journalists were once chosen based on a couple of stories and a nod of the head from the editor. Columnists would write and as long as the editor was happy, it was published and they were paid. The crux is, no one actually knew whether the public ever bothered to read what they wrote.

With the internet, that’s no longer the case. There’s instant feedback. Your readers will tell you. Take a long hard look at this article by the Telegraph, “Facebook ‘linked to rise in syphilis‘,” as its ilk will be extinct.

If that’s an example of serious journalism, then they’re right. It’ll die out.

Bloggers started writing for free, for passion. They wrote because they felt a compulsion.

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition
–Graham Greene

After years of writing as a hobby, they had enough visitors and made some money off advertising. They made a lot of money. Suddenly, they took it seriously, quit their day job and wrote their blog full time.

Newspapers are dying, journalists aren’t[sic]. Whether a writer writes as a blogger or for a large newspaper doesn’t dictate the quality, it’s whether they’re getting paid or not. Serious journalism can exist without newspapers. What we need are editorial standards and that’ll happen as the internet matures. The Huffington Post and Slate are sites with their own newsrooms. They aren’t the pinnacle of editorial standards, but they’re getting there and I’m sure many will follow suit.

I do agree with much of the panelists that crowd sourced media doesn’t have much of a future. The quality of Newsvine, Demotix and NowPublic just leave too much to be desired. They need an editor and to be paid.

Can old media become new?

The real question is whether old print media can morph into new media, or whether a new company will arise, unencumbered by all that legacy. To understand the state of newspapers, you have to understand what happened with other forms of media. Let’s take music.

Music
With the advent of the internet, music could be shared quickly and easily. Why go to the shop when you can just download it? There were no convenient legal option. The music companies were slow to react and give their offering. They were encumbered by legacy. Your options were:

• Napster
• The shop

A few years down the line and new legal options have appeared. The below scenarios are now open to me as a consumer of music.

• Pirate it, the most convenient of which allows me to go into a shop and find a CD I like, whip out my phone and take a snap of the bar code. By the time I get home, the CD will be on my computer.
• Spotify, I search for the song I want and press play. It’ll play instantly. Every few songs, an advert plays.
• Itunes.

So what does a 23 year old like me prefer to do? I personally use Spotify.

The music industry were in a quandary a couple of years ago. They were forced to adapt and they did, but truth be told all the innovation was brought by the start ups. Whether The Guardian, The New York Times et al live can live in the new world, depends on if they’re willing to make drastic changes. How can they though? They’ve still got bad investments, pensions, large expensive offices and foreign desks.

In the next ten years I personally see new companies starting up and filling the void. They’ll select their journalists from bloggers with a proven readership and have them all telecommute. As they mature they’ll have the same rigour as our current stalwarts.

Will Varley | you cease to amaze me.

A couple of people have mentioned that Will Varley, master of the guitar, is in a new advert. He’s extolling the virtues of University; a little ironic seeing as he’s shunned university for the limelight. It’s airing on an endless loop.

This is what he usually looks like:

http://www.willvarley.com/

Myspace

Direct marketing – a step by step guide to annoying thousands.

We’ve been plodding along with this business in its current form for about 8 months now. We’ve tried vfd regional newspapers, leaflets, google adsense and stalking. Some have been effective, some havn’t. Maybe one day i’ll number crunch our return on investment for each medium. Anyhow, our new shot at the big time.

Our business targets a specific demographic, namely; households with a child in Year 5.

Step 1.

Data

I first of all tried to get a copy of the 2002 Electoral Register (the last register with everyones address on) and a copy of the 2007 ER. This was going to be cross referenced with the Birth Death Marriage databases on offer to get all households with children born between a range of months.

1. Use the birth register to get a list of all children born between 09/97 to 08/98.
2. Use the mother/father field and search the marriage database to get their full name.
3. Get the 2007 ER and fill in the gaps with the 2007 ER.
4. Automate the task. Fucking hard.

192.com has the 2002 ER and the 2007 ER. Ancestry.com has the birth death and marriage database. Getting a hard copy of the data I can use locally however, proved to be a lot more tricky. Providing I got the data, I would then have to clean the data using the mailing preference list.

While it sounds a little long winded, it does actually work. Failing to automate the task – I gave up.
If anyone believes they can help, get in contact. We’ll be rich.

Along the way I discovered how easy credit card fraud is, but i’ll leave that to another time.

Getting a mailing list isn’t much of a bother. Call up a dozen mailing list companies and get some quotes. Ours were in the region of £60 per 1000 addresses to £200 per 1000 addresses. After much research, we decided to waste our money on the most expensive at £200 per thousand and some delivery costs. 30 fucking pounds to email over a tiny file?

Mailing list companies can be placed into two categories. Those that compile the data and those that buy the data wholesale and sell it at margin. They’ll all however, say they’re the former.

mailing list accuracy

All mailing lists have a major flaw. The data is usually collected via questionnaires, surveys, scam prize draws. Therefore, any data actually gathered is usually from a muppet. Someone who most probably isn’t interested in a luxury product. Time will tell whether i’m wrong.

Step 2.

Making the brochure.

I bought roughly £70 of pictures on istock.com and settled on a swatch. I then opened up Indesign and set up a strict 6 column grid layout. I then went to lynda.com and watched a 15hr tutorial video on indesign. I watched it nonstop. After becoming proficient at Indesign I set about designing. It took about 20hrs.

Step 3.

Printing

The brochure was printed:

5,000 16pp (216mm x 279.5mm) landscape

made up of:

4pp (216mm x 279.5mm) cover printed on 250gsm 9 lives

12pp (216mm x 279.5mm) pages printed on 100gsm 9 lives

Crease cover, fold, stitch & trim.

If you understand the above and arn’t in the print design industry then I feel sorry for you. The brochures were printed on 100% recycled paper and are US Letter in size.

Step 4.

Mail Fulfillment

The royal mail have a dozen different ways of posting something. It’ll drastically reduce your cost of mailing a large quantity. We decided to not bother and pay full whack.

The full cheap ass 3rd class mailsort rate would have cost £800 ~ for 4000 large letter 100g envelopes. The standard rate is £1680.

The reason why is because to get that discount you need to spend over £5000 with good ol consignia a year. You can opt to go with a mailing house but they’ll charge you £600 to insert and print your letterheads. To make it as un junk mail as possible all letterheads are hand signed and stamped instead of a scanned signature and franked or a PPI (postage paid impression).

That picture shows 500 brochures. It took 5 hours. When everything is fully bagged up, it’ll weigh 700kg.

CODE 94 at Heathrow Terminal 2

Well Graham and I started working at Heathrow about a week ago now. All we have to do is stand beside security and holla “no liquids,cremes or lighters,” continuosly. This is a lot more tiring than it seems. Standing up for 8 hours straight. The pay isn’t too bad though at £8.75.

Anyway, on the 11th they evacuated Terminal 2. Absolute chaos. The terminal was closed for about 4 hours due to some lunatic leaving a bag with a bomb inside. Bloody berk. Once we got back inside the queues meandered outside. Of course we had the job of directing. There we were, megaphones in hand, shouting. We made a mention into a couple of papers.

Dave Winship, travelling to Zimbabwe on a 7pm flight, said it looked unlikely that he would leave on time.

“What annoys me more than anything else is that there is no information,” he said.

“They’re relying on some poor bloke shouting down the queue. If I’m at the end how am I supposed to know when they are calling my flight?”

The Dungeons & Dragons girl.

On Sunday I got off my tits. That sentence precedes most of my posts. Anyway, I didn’t plan it; a dozen people who did’t know each other all to well, managed to congregate simultaneosly in a pub started with the drinking.

I spotted a pretty girl called Olivia and started talking nonsense. She said something casually about how prostitution be legal legal. Huge argument ensues. Doesn’t really matter, I get her number and call her a couple of days later.

I use an unusually bad premise to meet her at a pub. She’s a little harder to talk to than I remembered (Assumption of dimness) and I relegate myself to the bench for a couple of pints. One of her friends looks a little bored and I accost her. We do the obligatory niceties and a lovley hour in she starts talking about Dungeons and Dragons.

I’ve heard of this game. It’s legendary. 80′s mullets and long hair, pimply men who should have lost their spots a while ago. Locked in a cellar, three lizards encroach. Do you want to attack? How an earth can quite an attractive 18 year old girl be so enthused. I actually bought the spiel and want to learn how to play. Maybe she’ll teach me.

My phone ran out of batteries, but I thought I’d ask her for her number anyway. She blithely says no straight up. Ouch. It didn’t even occur to me that she wouldn’t give me her number. It’s not that i’m arrogant or anything, which I usually am, it’s just that in this day of super multi connectivity I havn’t met anyone who was bothered enough not to give me their number. I’m officially a lech.

New age breakdown of super multi connective dating:

Ask for her Myspace

her msn address

her email

her mobile

her home number.

Her refusing to give me her number has left me thinking about her to the wee hours. She hinted that she’d be at Oceania tomorrow. I’m on a hunt.

p.s – I went tense tastic.