We live, then, in a new age of cultural populism – an age in which everyone is not only entitled to his opinion but is encouraged to share it. Nothing could be more American.
(What’s a springboard story? Storytelling guru Stephen Denning defines it as:
a story that enables a leap in understanding by the audience so as to grasp how an organization or community or complex system may change.http://www.stevedenning.com/Business-Narrative/springboard-story.aspx
The ebook revolution has swept past two more milestones in its ferocious advance upon the bastions of literary culture.
Other things could be possible in future but that would depend on the availability of fast broadband to provide low-cost distribution.
Another sign that social media have been recognised by mainstream media, but it come in a context with other views.
What is happening is that connectedness is becoming a relatively mundane part of people's lives. So when significant things happen – riots, strikes, elections, conflicts and social upheavals of all kinds – it's only to be expected that they will use the communication tools with which they are familiar. The message for dictators, elected politicians and newspaper editors alike is simple. This is the way things are: get used to it.
On the one hand, then, we all know what we're doing and where we're going. On the other hand, search me! I haven't a clue.
News International used to tell us, until a week ago, that it had had one rogue journalist and that was the end of it. When the Commons media committee heard these things it snorted with derision, so why haven't these people been called to account?
One reason is that the tabloid press has ignored the story. Miller must be amazed: she has finally found something she can do in her private life that red-tops won't feast on. But for most of the newspaper-reading public this story does not exist: they have never been confronted with the strange claims of the Met and News International.
The phone-hacking scandal that cost the Prime Minister's head of communications, Andy Coulson, his job involves a string of newspapers - not just the News of the World, a lawyer has told Sky News.
Mark Lewis said he is representing clients preparing to bring civil court cases against several newspaper groups over allegations of phone tapping.
His claims suggest the practice of illegal eavesdropping is much more commonplace than first thought.
"I am absolutely positive - and I am not an advocate for the News of the World - that this wasn't a practice for one newspaper or even one newspaper group," Mr Lewis said. "It's fair to say that over the past 10 years or so most entertainment stories will have had some element of subterfuge."
It emerged earlier this month that News of the World executive Ian Edmondson has been suspended as a result of claims in a case brought by actress Sienna Miller. Police subsequently wrote to the newspaper asking for any new evidence staff had on the case.
The House of Commons Media Culture and Sport Committee need to reopen their enquiry into the phone hacking affair. Some of the evidence presented by Coulson last time he appeared in front of it now makes no sense (for instance his claim to the MP Adam Price that ‘I am absolutely sure that Clive’s case was a very unfortunate rogue case’) now appears nonsensical.
The humiliating scene at 10 Downing Street was also a victory for The New York Times over Rupert Murdoch—not that anyone in Arthur Sulzberger’s employ would be so petty as to point that out, unless you eavesdropped on their phone calls
Britain’s sharp-elbowed tabloids seem to have abandoned some of their more outlandish practices since Mr. Coulson worked at The News of the World. But politicians and many British reporters and editors say that few standards apply in a world where reporters think nothing of concealing their identities when pursuing stories and tabloids routinely pay thousands of dollars to sources willing to provide evidence of celebrities’ extramarital affairs.
Tabloid editors are also known to keep close watch over their reporters.
“No one who knows how a newspaper works, let alone a well-run British newspaper, has ever been able to understand for one second why a very effective editor wouldn’t have at least asked his royal reporter where a stream of very strong scoops had come from,” said an editor at another tabloid who asked not to be quoted by name because he was not authorized to speak publicly to the press.
In North America, where Pearson makes just more than 40 per cent of its annual revenues and is expanding market share, sales were buoyed by demand for computer- and internet-based learning materials as well as software for school and university administration.