Happy Birthday Twitter: How UK Newspapers Stumbled Into The Digital Future

So, it’s the 7th birthday of the most important development in human communication since a young Alexander Graham Bell used a piece of string to connect two plastic cups  and pondered “this gives me an idea” [citation needed]. Twitter has come from nowhere, via everyone not on Twitter thinking that everyone on Twitter just uses it so say things like “might go upstairs later”, to its current position as Most Important Thing On The Planet. And that’s just our Twitter account we’re talking about.

As one might expect from what is now the print media’s most ubiquitous online reference point, the anniversary is being covered in just about every newspaper outside of the Anglesey Examiner, but the press wasn’t always so keen to cover Twitter. Join us now, as we delve through the websites of the UK’s national press (apart from the ones with uselessly hateful search functions) so see when each first covered Twitter, and in which context.

In ascending date order, then:

[UPDATE 22 March 2013: A few of the gaps filled in below, with thanks to a couple knowledgeable readers willing to engage in the dark arts of “knowing things” and “doing research”. An extravagantly angled tip of our titfer to both James and Mike Landers for the assistance.]

The Guardian: 27 November 2006

A Comment is free piece on the acceptability of letting the internet know you’re a real-life person, dammit.

Twitter is: “the ultimate in solipsism”.

 

[UPDATE: Reader, gentleman and walking infohub known only to us as ‘James’ writes in to inform us that The Times belong next on the list. Having deftly avoided the Great Paywall of Murdoch by using proper research database Newsbank, James reports that The Times first covered Twitter just a few weeks after the Guardian. Here’s the skinny:

“The honour for the second reference and indeed the first direct article about it goes to The Times, a two line piece in their "The Click" column in Times2... dated Tuesday 12 December 2006:

The site twitter .com, started in March 2006 as a side project of Odeo, an audio website, is based on the concept of friends and strangers answering the question, "What are you doing?" Subscribers areinvited to tell everyone that they are getting ready for work, they have "just bit into a hot chilli"...or whatever.”

Visit our lavishly furnished comments deck for the full comment from James.]

 

Financial Times: 23 March 2007

Not too much to report, given that you need to subscribe in order to read articles, but the FT are pretty quick out of the blocks, with the Tech Hub section running an article on the fledgling service.

Twitter is: “Microblogging for the lazy.”

 

[UPDATE: It’s possible The Telegraph could be amongst the early adopters, though we’re still not sure exactly when. Reader and gentleman Mike Landers informs us (via the comments of this article, we don’t have a network of spies or anything):

“The Telegraph jumped on the bandwagon early. When I spoke to Orlowski (yeah yeah I know) in Spring 2009 he said it was an open competition between a couple of hacks at the Guardian and their Telegraph counterparts to get as many pieces about it as possible.”

Which does makes sense, with the Telegraph being one of the first – if not the very first – UK newspapers to have a renowned online operation. Though the search function on their website is still wincingly awful.]

 

The Independent: 4 April 2007

An article about Twitter, funnily enough.

Twitter is: According to Tom Wetheredge, a ‘net user asked about the microblogging site for the article, “a perfect example of how the internet can keep us too connected."

 

The Sun: 7 September 2007

In what you could describe as either a sober report on those affected by a tragedy, or an early example into snooping into the social network accounts of victims (which would be perhaps a little unfair, no matter how much we dislike The Sun), a reference to students present at the Virginia Tech shootings using the service to express their panic as the attack was taking place.

Twitter is: a website which “which asks contributors to tell it what they are doing”.

 

Daily Mail: 30 April 2008

A piece about how Steve Jobs is evil.

 

Twitter is: A “one-line blog website”.

Later, the first article about Twitter itself appeared on 24 July 2008 (“New SMS site Twitter grows 600% in a year”), and the first time it tried to crowbar it into a manufactured ‘scandal’ was on 19 December 2008 (when Jonathan Ross – on his post-Sachsgate hiatus – used it to ‘brag’ about daring to enjoy himself).

 

 

Daily Mirror: 19 December 2008

Another slice of faux-outrage about that evil, wicked Jonathan Ross boasting about enjoying himself.

Twitter is: a “new messaging website”, despite actually being almost three years old by that point.

 

 

Daily Star: 9 January 2009

Jonathan Ross again. Note the helpful and newsworthy revelation that Ross posts “up to 23 updates a day”. How DID he get time to literally spit in the face of every innocent man, woman and child in the UK with all that going on, eh?

Twitter is: “currently the hottest networking site on the web.”

 

Daily Express: 14 January 2009

The newspaper, who possibly needed to explain what the internet was to its readers as late as 2008, waited until tabloid bête noir SHAMED JONATHAN WOSSY WOSS does a thing on it before mentioning Twitter.

Twitter is: An “online […] blog”. As opposed to all those offline blogs you get. On parchment.

 

Sadly, no results from the Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard or Metro, due to aforesaid search rubbishness, though you’re all welcome to delve through their archives in search of early Twitter mentions. Google site searches by date don’t work for them, by the way, as that includes results for modern-day Twitter mentions embedded in each site’s CSS.

Meanwhile, for the four newspapers who provide useful search functions allowing for a breakdown by year, here are some charts. Everyone likes charts. Wholly non-scientific, what with each of the following including uses of the word ‘Twitter’ in the context of both the website and the noise birds makes, but interesting. Well, slightly interesting. Possibly only if you’re us.

 

 

NEXT UPDATE: The last ever instances of ‘Google Plus’ in UK newspapers. Or not.

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“Does anyone remember the News of the World?”

You know when you hear something really good, and think “I am SO putting that on YouTube so more people can hear it”, but then realise lots of other people have had the same idea so you don’t need to bother doing it?

A marvellous monologue from John Finnemore, covering events of the News of the World phonehacking story on last week’s The Now Show.

Hearing Finnemore’s performance in this format is much, much better than actually listening to The Now Show, because in this format the crescendo the routine builds to isn’t immediately deflated by having to listen to Mitch bloody Benn perform a rubbish song about not washing your pants. And we didn’t even make that up.

WARNING: If, like us, you’re listening to the above routine just after listening to the latest episode of the thunderously marvellous radio sitcom Cabin Pressure, the initial impact of it is slightly dissipated by it seemingly being performed by Arthur, the in-flight dimwit played by John Finnemore in that programme. Stick with it, or imagine David Mitchell’s reading it all out or something.

If you haven’t yet listened to Cabin Pressure, remedy that immediately (after listening to the embedded video above). It’s got TV’s Benedict Cumberbatch in it and everything.

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News of the World to close

…And that’s the end of that chapter. Except, of course, it isn’t.

Unless Murdoch is going to relaunch Today as a Sunday-only newspaper, it’s pretty clear what is about to happen. We’ll be surprised if there’s even a gap between the News of the World closing and a replacement popping up in its place, considering that’d let the two Mirror Group red tops pick up a bunch of extra readers. So, we may as well get this done nice and early…

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Boycott the News of the World: A Cut-Out-and-Give-Away Guide

[UPDATE 7pm WEDS 6th JULY: The flyer and all uploads now updated to include the latest news. If you downloaded it before, you might want to nab the latest version as well. Many thanks to everyone who’s mentioned the flyer on Twitter, Facebook, various web forums and the Guardian comments section. Feel free to adapt, amend, mirror or host any versions of that flyer yourself. Get that message out there!]

The News of the World phone hacking scandal rumbles on, with fresh allegations that the paper targeted the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. A Twitter-led campaign to boycott the newspaper has been rumbling on since the story broke, along with a concerted campaign requesting that a number of companies re-evaluate their advertising spend. Some members of the public are even phoning the News of the World newsline (0207 782 1001), yelling a certain word starting with the letter ‘C’, then hanging up.

All perfectly admirable behaviour, but we can’t help but feel a big bunch of people who probably didn’t buy the News of the World in the first place pledging not to buy the paper won’t really make too much difference. Indeed, any member of the public who chooses to get their ‘news’ from tabloid newspapers may well remain blissfully unaware of the story – at the time of writing, only the Daily Mail is giving any prominence to the latest phone hacking revelations, featuring the story on the front page of today’s edition (though not the main story), and at the time of writing it’s the only tabloid to feature it as top story on their website. In the other tabloids it’s rather suspiciously deemed worthy being tucked away in the inside pages, leaving front page room for Ashley Cole, Prince William and the latest desperate health scare (yeah, that’ll be the Express).

What might help is to try and get the story out there, where tabloid readers are a little more likely to see it. Say for example, you could print out a quick synopsis of the phone hacking story as it stands, and discreetly place it atop the pile of News of the Worlds in your local newsagent, petrol station forecourt or supermarket. Something a bit like this, perhaps?

Full JPEG (641KB) | PNG (607KB) | PDF (122KB)
Word 2003 Document (420KB) | Word 2007 Document (407KB)
Photoshop PSD (Zipped, 9,714KB)

There’s the above sheet in a variety of formats, feel free to download, print, disseminate, or even adjust it as you wish to make any number of points expressing how you feel about the News of the World. Feel free to host these files on your own websites, Twitpic accounts, blogs, Facebook sites or whatever – the main thing is to get the message out there.

You might even remain strongly in favour of the paper, and want to re-edit the document to express how you think hacking into the voicemail of missing children is actually a good thing, and that Rebekah Brooks should now become Prime Minister. Though, y’know, you’d be an idiot.

The main thing is, if the tabloid newspapers – who you’ll remember think that taking any approach to get a good story is wholly justified – don’t want this story out there, we might just have to do it ourselves.

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A News of the World employee hacks into the mobile phone voicemail of missing schoolgirl. Is that newsworthy or not?

So, The Guardian reports creditable claims that an employee from the News of the World hacked into, and deleted messages from, the voicemail of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002, leading to false hope for her parents that she was still alive, and misleading the police investigation at the time. That's a pretty big story, and unquestionably a much bigger scandal than the kind of "FAMOUS MAN OFF TELLY OR FOOTBALL SAYS OR DOES SOMETHING A BIT CONTROVERSIAL" thing that would cover an entire wall of a newsagent like bilious wallpaper.

The stories broke a couple of hours ago (this is being typed at 7pm), so Her Majesty's press have had plenty of time to put the story on their websites. Which of them have it "above the fold", that is, have the story in a position that's visible on the front page of their website without having to scroll down or carry out a search?

YES:

The Guardian: lead story

The Independent: lead story

The Telegraph: lead story

The Times: fourth story, though the News of the World’s sister newspaper takes a very different approach to the story, instead reporting it as “Dowler family sues News of the World”:

NO:

Daily Mirror: no coverage of the Milly/News of the World phonehacking story, but Fearne Cotton has a “new boyf”.

NOTW’s sister paper The Sun: no coverage, but a “Fat bloke is at top of Next modelling poll”.

Daily Star: No coverage, but “Gorgeous Gemma is making her page 3 debut today” is considered newsworthy.

Onto the supposedly “quality tabloids”, then. Starting with the Daily Express: no coverage, though blah blah cancer, holidays, Miliband, the EU.

The Daily Mail: no coverage. But two of the three lead stories are that Kate and Wills are in Canada. Of course, dead schoolgirls are only important to the Daily Mail when they can blame it on striking teachers.

So, that’s how the press are covering (or not) the News of the World/News International Milly Dowler phonehacking story. The broadsheet press have decided it is a news story. The tabloids, well, we can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to throw any more light on the whole ‘dark arts of tabloid journalism’ thing. Can you?

 

Meanwhile, over on News International’s corporate website, a irony-free reminder of just what constitutes “world-class journalism”:

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Andy Coulson Resignation: The UK Press Coverage

STAT ALERT.

Those hard-to-read URLs in full:

Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349239/David-Camerons-spin-doctor-Andy-Coulson-quits-phone-hacking-row.html
Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-camerons-spin-chief-andy-coulson-quits-2190689.html
Daily Express: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/224507/Andy-Coulson-quits-over-phone-hacking-row
Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/david-cameron/8274940/Andy-Coulson-quits-Number-10.html
The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/21/andy-coulson-resigns
The Sun: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3364474/Coulson-quits-as-PMs-press-chief.html
Daily Mirror: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/news/2011/01/21/andy-coulson-quits-as-david-cameron-spin-doctor-115875-22865629/
Daily Star: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/posts/view/173067/Cameron-s-media-chief-Coulson-quits/
The Times: Pesky paywall in place, unable to read story.

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What The Papers Don’t Say

What with it being, well, easier than reporting any actual news, much of the press are complaining about the BBC. Again.

The latest excuse for complaining about Auntie is that diminutive digger James Murdoch has been complaining about the fact the BBC gets money from everyone, which they then use to make actual programmes. Clearly, he’d much rather it’s all given to Sky, where you can see the half dozen US imports Sky One have blown all of their programming budget on.

Naturally, all of this is lapped up by the hacks in certain quarters of Fleet Street (mainly the parts that like to frequently use the words ‘political’, ‘correctness’ and ‘mad’ in the same sentence), meaning the non-story is getting more attention that it really deserves. After all, it’s not as if Pa Murdoch hasn’t spent much of the last few decades complaining about the same thing.

After all, come on! We have to pay a fortune for the BBC each year. Well, unless you’re over 75, in which case it’s free, or don’t own a TV (a prospect more likely than you might imagine, given the wealth of content pumped out of the ‘web instead), in which case you’re still legally permitted to listen to BBC Radio and use the non-iPlayery parts of bbc.co.uk. But still, £139.50 a year? That’s loads! Frigging hell!

But, how much of a bargain is the BBC, especially when compared to other forms of media? We’re going to take a quick look. Will we be able to do so without going “waaah, stealth tax! Stealth tax!” in a high pitched tone? We shall see.

We’ve taken a look at the annual prices for Sky’s pay TV offering, currently run by one James Murdoch, but also looked at the costs involved in buying a daily newspaper over the course of a year (260 weekday editions, 52 Saturday editions and 52 Sunday editions, no papers on Christmas Day, of course). Here are the prices we’ve used for our calculations:

We’ve taken the most recent list of UK newspaper prices we could find (from January this year, so they might be a little out of date – we’re willing to update the figures accordingly if someone can point at a more up-to-date list). We’ve also taken into account three different SkyTV packages (basic, family, and full-monty Sports, Movies and HD packs). This results in the following chart:

So, a full Sky package will cost you nearly £700 per year, and that’s not taking into account the forthcoming price rises. Even the most basic of Sky packages (Sky1, Sky2, Living, Gold, Watch, Comedy Central, SciFi, Challenge, FX, DMax, Movies 24, and E!, if you’re not including channels that are free on Freeview, timeshifted channels or channels designed purely to lure you into gambling), will cost you £82.50 more than the BBC. Were you to tot up the total hours of original, homegrown programming put out by the channels of either package over twelve months, the Beeb would be streets ahead. Meanwhile, a full Sky package, including HD channels at £10/month, will cost you 4.95 times the price of the licence fee. And that’s if you don’t take ESPN. For the record, were you to add ESPN to your channel mix in order to watch all live televised Premier League football matches, it’d be £786 per annum, 5.63 times the licence fee. Oh, it’s worth pointing out that the price of BBC HD is included in the licence fee.

As for the papers (and note we’ve included the liberal press as well, for the sake of completeness), only The Daily Star works out as being more reasonably priced than the BBC. And be honest, you’d have to really like tits and racism to think a years worth of the Daily Star is preferable to a year of having the Beeb.

So, in summary, the BBC is a genuine bargain (seriously, we’d happily pay £139.50 per year for BBC Four alone. We’ll even forgive it for BBC Three), and to our mind, nearly as great a British institution as the NHS. So, the press, what do you have to say about that?

“Waah, they’re not spending enough of the taxpayer’s money.”

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An Update About Big Brother That Isn't Really About Big Brother So Most Of Our Readers Might Want To Read It Anyway

This year it seems that the Sunday Mirror (and possibly the Daily Mirror, only we haven't looked at that for months because it's an especially poor read at the moment) have taken the decision that they "don't" like Big Brother. What this actually means is that they're still going to spend at least four pages of every edition going on about it, but delivering all copy in whatever the literary equivalent of a sarcastic voice is. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course - all tabloids like to do this sort of thing where celebrities are concerned (not that the bungalowmates really qualify as celebrities), and it's true to say that BrokenTV is massively guilty of the same thing from time to time.

However, the absolute nadir of this approach can be found on page 27 of this week's copy. Kevin "He's The Real TV Mr Nasty" O'Sullivan (erm, no he isn't?) is charged with keeping tabs on each one of the residents of the Big Brother Bungalow, and writing a little 'summing-up' of every one of them, every week. In order to cement his "The Real TV Mr Nasty" credentials, he really socks it to each one of the shameless BB wannabes. Except, as most people who've watched the current series will probably have noticed, the majority of tenants for this year aren't especially disagreeable. In some cases they might be flawed, self-conscious, emotionally fragile or a bit shallow, but in the main they're fundamentally decent enough people. But "The Real TV Mr Nasty" has a job to do!

So, Liam? He's tewwibly working class! The twins, Brian and Gerry? Stupid, "sensationally stupid" and a "greek tragedy"! Chantelle? "Coconut Head"! Laura? "Spends most of her time lying in bed being fat"! And, as you can probably imagine, so on. The last of these is an especially low blow, which almost tempts us into saying something along the lines of "Kevin O'Sullivan is the very worst kind of smug cunt; he's a fucking smug cunt". Luckily, as we're not about to start billing ourselves at The Real Internet's Mr Nasties and because our mum might read this, we're not about to descend to that level.

Personally, we'd happily go out and get drunk with any of the BB07 contestants, apart from Charley (because she'd start a fight) and Carole (because she'd start nagging us about ordering the drinks wrongly or tell us off for going on the fruit machine). Liam would pay for the drinks from his winnings, natch.

Of course, given that Kevin "He's The Real TV Mr Nasty" O'Sullivan is making a healthy living from giving controversial and insightful insights into television (Gillian McKeith is quite annoying, apparently. Who knew!?), while we're embittered loners swigging Somerfield Value gin whilst hammering away on a tawdry TV blog only read by other supermarket-own-brand-gin addled reprobates. Maybe we need to introduce more of an 'edge' by making needlessly controversial remarks about those that probably don't deserve it? Then the offers from Her Majesty's Press will start flooding in!

Fingers crossed!

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