My Top Ten Adverts For My Own Affiliate Store

When it comes to writing blog posts I always enjoy churning out lists. They take seconds to write and yet readers still lap them up like kittens at a saucer of milk. Little do they know that the milk is way past its sell by date and has started to curdle - Ha! silly kittens.

I've recently discovered something even better than plain old lists though: lists containing nothing but links to my Amazon store. They're just fab. See, it looks like I'm just doing another innocent list post but really I'm selling you stuff on which I get paid commission. And you probably didn't even realise! Isn't that fun?

[insert a bit of conversational padding here]

So without further ado, here's my Top Ten Super Brilliant Books to BUY RIGHT NOW FROM MY STORE:

1. Flat Earth News by Nick Davies
A ripping yarn about a journal-jism. I got this book for Winterval even though I usually ask for picture books. It has quite a lot of words, but it's still good. BUY BUY BUY





2. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
A clever person book by scientician Ben Goldacre. Centres around brilliance of science reporting in the media. Absolutely stat-tastic. PLEASE BUY IT FROM MY STORE





3. In the Loop by Armando Iannucci
Left wing shoutmonger Malcolm Tucker goes to Washinton but doesn't reckon on the opposition of the yanks. Spin off off of the brilliant BBC1 comedy 'The Thick of It'. YOU CAN BUY THIS HERE TO GIVE ME MONEY




4. Dawn of the Dumb by Charlie Brooker
I can't be bothered to even pretend that I'm doing this for any other reason than to make some post-Xmas money, so here's the blurb from Amazon: 'Polite, pensive, mature, reserved ...Charlie Brooker is none of these things and less. Rude, unhinged, outrageous, and above all funny, "Dawn of the Dumb" is essential reading for anyone with a brain and a spinal cord. And hands for turning the pages.' GO TO MY AMAZON SHOP AND BUY THIS FROM THERE, NOT THE MAIN SITE, PLEASE

5. Media Control by Noam Chomsky
I haven't actually read this but it's probably quite good. Media studies students are told to read Noam Chomsky and they know where it's at. This book is only 50 pages long which is nice. It's seeringly honest. BUY IT NOW PLEASE, MAKE SURE YOU CLICK THIS LINK TO BUY IT, DON'T SEARCH FOR IT OR BUY IT FROM WATERSTONES OR I WON'T GET ANY MONEY OK, SO CLICK HERE WHERE THE BLUE UNDERLINED WORDS ARE, THANKS

Ok, I know I said it was a top ten list but I got so bored writing this that my face started to melt.

So, er, now I need to pretend that this is an actual blog post about something and not just an excuse to print loads of adverts...ooh, this is a bit awkward, um...ah! yes, of course -

So what are your favourite books about journalism and media and things? Do tell me in the comments; I'm not just here to sell you stuff you know!

P.S.Do you know anyone who needs an internet pundit to speak at a function? I'm always available at a low, low price. Also do birthdays, weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.

WOOT: LISTS.

With Winterval over and the in-laws hopefully gone back home, we can all start making - or being bored silly by - LISTS. Woot.

Nearly 1 of you voted in the Quail's 2009 List-tacular pre-New Year Winter solstice super Awards for the achievement of piffling dribble in the name of media & political commentary so without further ado, here are the results.

Best bloke who says things about topics he doesn't really understand but does so anyway despite looking quite silly because of fundamental mistakes in logic and/or research before getting roundly factchecked only to call them losers for bothering to factcheck and stop taking it all so seriously anyway I didn't say that it was just a quote from someone else:

1. Iain Dale.
2. Hitchens, P.
3. DBlaney.
4. Nick Cohen.

Most eye-buggering use of video:

Stains, P & Tuberculosis Bear.

Worst front page in the history of everything:

The Express.

Nastiest campaign motivated by a petty squabble on Twitter that made bloggers look like a witless rabble of snide misogynistic schoolboys (again):

#kerryout (courtesy Dale, Bear, Quiff)

Best viral marketing campaign:

Trafigura.

Lifetime achievement award for disservices to journalism, tolerance and the human race:

Jan Moir.

* Update *

I missed out the most prestigious award. Cheesedick of the year 2009 is...............

That Hannan man.

How bollocks spreads in the world of Web 2.0, with Iain Dale

Part three of our infrequent guide to reporting the news.

This week: social media

The dead-tree press is increasingly using so-called "social media" to promote content. It can be a daunting, confusing, often sticky experience, but using the "internet", or "webb", to your advantage is becoming an important part of proper journalism (the kind you read in newspapers).

With just four simple steps you'll be able to force your made up rubbish into the faces of millions of "surfers" - your editor will thank you for the extra readers!

Step 1: Make up some nonsense as usual, either by literally just inventing a story or by twisting some new directive/announcement/press release beyond all recognition to fit your agenda. In our example, we'll take a rather boring guideline update issued by Watford Council and pretend it's politicalcorrectnessgonemad. Add the keyword "paedophile" if the story involves children to really get people going.


Step 2: Once your piffle has been published, the fun begins! Ensure that readers are unable to vent their outrage (or correct you) on the article itself by turning comments off, but adding super-handy "meeja" buttons. This will encourage people to rant about your article in other internetual places, thus compelling others to visit your page to see what all the fuss is about.


Note: Don't give people the option to share your story on Twitter - it's a dangerous place where agendas are picked apart by orchestrated mobs and the truth uncovered by annoying web pixies. You're far safer with more modern options like MySpace and Fark.

Step 3: Syndicate and localize your content. By sending your story to local news comics like the London Metro, you make it seem like politicalcorrectnessgonemad is truly on your readers' doorstep. The more scared or angry they are, the more likely they are to share it when they get home or to the office.


Step 4: Now it's time to let your imaginary case of politicalcorrectnessgonemad go viral. This can be a frightening prospect - what if one of these interweb people finds out it's all a load of invented rubbish? What if the council itself issues a statement revealing that you made it up? Not to worry! You can rely on the heavy-weight bloggers (the same ones, coincedentally, we promote as the foremost authorities on blogging), to be taken in by your story however nonsensical it is!


By this point you can rest assured that your agenda was so compelling that the internet people were willing to lack past the gaping holes in reason and ignore the vast chasms of bollocks upon which your story was based. The important thing - the subtext - has gone viral.

Step 5: The beauty of "social media" is that there is no step 5! Sit back and relax as the heavyweight bloggers who didn't bother to check if your story was actually true twitter it for you. Your made up bollocks will now be discussed, retweeted and relinked by the blogger's friends and associates - your imaginary case of politicalcorrectnessgonemad has become real.

It's important to remember that making your story go viral with "social media" is mainly about appearing innovative and cutting edge rather than actually increasing traffic by any meaningful amount. In this case, for instance, we only gained 63 extra visits and half of those were probably people laughing at Iain Dale for recycling made up news. Such are the dangers of Twitter.

But don't lose heart! The important thing is that your story got re-recycled in the blogosphere and commenters blindly agreed with their blogger lord that, yes, politicalcorrectness has indeed gonemad. Even if those readers didn't visit your story, you still managed to indirectly convince them that Britain is going to hell in a handcart and it's all the fault of those darn lefties.

Result!

Update: Bonus churnalism from the Graun and Heresy Corner (tagline: 'Countering complacency, received opinions and incoherant thought')

Mail [doesn't] apologise to gay man; glosses over a century of homophobia

The Daily Mail redeemed itself for 100 years of homophobia tonight by saying sorry to a gay.

The unprecedented apology excuses the newspaper's estimated 17 million cases of gay bashing since since its birth to proud same sex parents Lords Alfred 'Alfie Sparkles' Northcliffe and Harold 'Hazmatazz' Rothermere in 1896, but leaves it open to accusations of political correctness gone mad and pandering to minorities.

An insider said: 'It's political correctness gone mad. When will the Daily Mail stop pandering to minorities?'

Author of the 'Ephraim Hardcastle' gossip column Peter McKay apologised to openly Tory blogger Iain Dale after calling him 'overtly gay' and implying that he was attempting to organise some sort of fruity disco sausage fest by inviting readers of gay newspaper PinkNews to attend a parliamentary selection meeting:

Overtly gay Tory blogger Iain Dale has reached the final stage of parliamentary selection for Bracknell, telling PinkNews: "I hope any PinkNews readers who live in Bracknell will come to the open primary on October 17 to select their new candidate. You don't even have to be a Conservative to attend."

Isn't it charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause?

Dale responded by complaining to the Press Complaints Commission, and McKay* attempted to placate the angry gay with the following:

I must say I'm quite surprised at the furore created by the piece in my
column yesterday. As regular readers will be aware the EH section is meant to be a lighthearted gossip piece and is certainly not meant to be taken
seriously.

However I understand that perspectives on these things are different for
different people and realise that though no offence was intended, you did indeed find the piece offensive.

I'm certainly happy to offer my fullest apologies for any offence caused
and reflect that I may have made an error of judgement on this occasion.

Of course I'll happily through a few bobbies in the direction of your
nominated charity and hope that all is now fine and dandy.

The offending section of the Hardcastle column has now been removed [update: it's now been reinstated]. Sources say the sincerely self-justifying apology completely makes up for such previous cases of homophobia as the Mail's campaign against gay child-snatching, Melanie Phillips's 'homosexuality is to blame for social breakdown' article, and Richard Littlejohn's entire back catalogue.

A barrel-chested heterosexual spokesman said: 'Thank goodness no high-profile Conservative bloggers have highlighted our rampant homophobia before. We've learned a valuable lesson today: generic bigotry goes unnoticed but gays cause a stink when we single them out. Oh well, at least all is fine and dandy now.'

++ Stop press ++

A clearly contrite Peter McKay follows up his apology with this in today's 'Hardcastle' column:

Tory blogger Iain Dale complains about an item here yesterday...I have nothing against Dale. Nor am I homophobic. But if he wants to become an MP, surely he'll have to become a little less sensitive. Incidentally, the Tories are having their first gay pride event at their Manchester conference next week. They'll promote a new 'gay-friendly' logo, Conservative Pride. Isn't life grand?

Update

* The apology was a hoax. Peter McKay has confirmed that he is unrepentant for being a homophobic cretin and that the apology was not penned by him.

A spokesman said: 'We would never apologise to a poof. We might catch queer by proxy somehow.'

So what is this 'blogosphere' thing anyway? An analysis of blogging as seen by mainstream media

Readers from the real world may have been perplexed by the attention given to the so-called 'blogosphere' this past weekend, and left wondering why they should care about it.

The short answer is they shouldn't.

The British blogosphere is comprised entirely of frustrated writers bitter about their inability to land jobs at real newspapers, sitting in their mother's basement, stabbing endlessly away at their computer keyboards in the middle of the night writing cretinous, infantile forums of abuse dressed up as argument in the hope that people will read their inconsequential, misinformed diatribe.

Such hopes are miguided and futile. People don't care what these vicious, nihilistic bloggers have to say because all the news and comment worth reading is already published by the mainstream national press. Granted, print journalism is usually several days behind the blogs, and presents an often strangled version of reality, but, ultimately, it is written by real journalists unfettered by the mindless intricacies of the internet - a dying medium if ever there was one. These are the people to trust, not square-eyed internet zombies removed from reality by their 'modems' and 'processors'.

A recent example of this growing dichotomy of reportage between the real newspapers and the blogs is the fine work done by the Evening Standard - the Daily Mail's London edition - which exclusively broke the news that brave police officers tending Ian Tomlinson in the moments before his death had been bombarded with bricks by evil anti-capitalist demonstrators at the G20 protests. It is telling that not a single blog noted this critically important event - presumably because many of the bloggers themselves are evil anti-capitalists desperate to cover up the vile behaviour of their comrades.

Indeed, those who live online are destined to die online, and if you delve deep enough into the 'blogosphere' you find a world that’s very happy to be separated from the real one. So divorced is this new breed of citizen journalist from reality that they even consider Twitter - the boring website beloved of celebrities who want to tell the world what kind of muffin they're eating - to be a useful tool for reporting news and monitoring 'buzz' around particular current affairs. How absurd!

It is around this ridiculous, irrelevant mire of online tittle-tattle and rumour that the events of this Easter weekend spun.

Ironically, the now-defunct, directionless British blogosphere was invented by leading conservative pundit Iain Dale in 1984. His website, Iain Dale's Little Black Book of Westminster was an immediate success and continues to attract nearly 12 billion absolute unique visits every month. It has been hailed as 'compelling and entertaining' by Piers Morgan but it is noteworthy that Dale has attempted to distance himself from the murky waters of the blogosphere through frequent appearances in national newspapers and on television. It is precisely because of his detachment from the reality of blogging that he has been shortlisted for the prestigeous Orwell Prize for blogging.

But it is testament to how low the blogosphere has sunk that Dale was barely involved in the weekend's scandal, despite repeated shouts of 'I want to play!'. Instead, it was former Labour spin-doctor Derek 'Dolly' Draper whose blog, LabourList, caters for 60 million people, at the centre of attention for illiciting those fateful emails from his Number 10 pal, Damian McBride.



However, if it hadn't been for crusading, swivel eyed, right-wing, sleaze-wallowing blogger Guido Fawkes, Draper's foul attempts to smear the Tories would never have come to light and bored the British public to tears in the first place. Fawkes - real name Paul 'Pee' Stains - rose to prominance in 2004 after being declared bankrupt and deciding the best way to claw his way from financial hell was to start a blog. It is still a mystery how this questionable strategy succeeded.

This trinity of bloggers - it is illustrative to think of them in terms of the father, the illegitimate son and the greasy ghost - are followed by a bewildering multitude of smaller, less important internet scribblers who, collectively, form the wider blogosphere. Dale and Stains count amongst their brethren such wits as Donal Blaney, scourge of 20 something Labour candidates, such thinkers as Dizzy, a computer programmer with a taste for pornography, and Letters from a Tory, a man who supports capital punishment for those who smell of alcohol and look at policemen a bit funny.

On the left, the list is even more depressing. Behind the fecal point known chillingly as 'The Liberal Conspiracy', sit a gaggle of naysayers and angry old men determined to destroy the few remaining whisps of tradition and middle-class pride this country clings to. Tim Ireland of The Bloggerhead pursues a ceaseless, brutal agenda against The One True blogger in almost every issue of his online magazine and even dares question the veracity of the national press in using deluded fantasists as authoritive sources. Vicious nihilists such as the unpalatably named Chicken Yoghurt, meanwhile, appear to support no particular brand of British politics, instead criticising the actions of the Tory and Labour parties in a fence-sittingly un-partisan kind of way. Suspiciously foreign sounding bloggers like Hopi Sen peddle the type of meandering lefty drivel that attacks everything but never proposes any decisive, committed plan of action or solution to anything.

For more excrutiating examples from the left-wing piffle-osphere, see the links to the left.

It is plain to see that the interminable fountain of drivel pouring forth from these 'writers' only serves to create a chaotic, screeching, somewhat sticky sphere of blogs, hopelessly inadequate compared to the panoply of well written, increasingly successful national newspapers.

The events of the Easter weekend have led to some discussion of a rebirth of blogging amongst some left-wing commentators. Only in the self-aggrandising world of online punditry could such heretical Messiah-aping be tolerated. Surely it is time for the bloggers to scurry back underneath their moss covered rocks and give up; surely, if Derek Draper has taught anyone anything, it is that blogging is a silly, puerile nonsense to be ignored by anyone with a shred of common sense.