Friday Grab Bag: BritNews RoundUp

Is Bella the mongrel the world's oldest living dog? The Daily Mail says she may be 169 years old "in doggie years." But what's this: The Daily Telegraph says Bella is "more than 200 years in canine years." 169? 200? Which one is correct? British owner David Richardson said he's had the Labrador mix for 26 years and she was about three when he got her, making her 29. And anyway, shouldn't that be in human years, not dog years? This Purina dog year calculator only goes up to 19. And Snopes.com poo-poos the very idea that an easy conversion from dog to human is possible.

According to the Mail Richardson thought he was going to lose Bella recently, and "with a heavy heart" he made an appointment with the vet to put her down and dug a grave in her favourite spot in the garden of his home in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. "However, after a sleepless and tearful night Mr Richardson decided he couldn't go through with it. He cancelled the vet's appointment and as if by magic Bella appeared as good as new as he filled in the grave."

Yeah, nothing inspires a dog's miraculous recover than watching its master dig its grave. As David Richardson has no documentation on Bella, she will not be officially recognized as the world's oldest dog.

While we're on the subject of dogs, police in Buckinghamshire had to rescue two women who went into a river to rescue a dog. One of the women was visually impaired. The dog was her guide dog. Perhaps it should consider a change of career.

"For reasons that remain somewhat unclear" the Jackson 5 appears to be moving to Devon. They've rented a house there anyway, apparently for a reality TV show. Jackie and Tito are already there. The rest of the clan, including the King of Pop himself, are said to be on the way. Perhaps Michael can teach the local Morris dancers some new moves.

It's been a while since we've had a story of a man having intercourse with an inanimate object. The drought is over. Edward Smith is the subject of a Channel Five documentary on "mechaphilia": people who love, and I mean really love, cars. According to the Telegraph, Smith "who lives with his current 'girlfriend' – a white Volkswagen Beetle named Vanilla, insisted that he was not 'sick' and had no desire to change his ways. 'I appreciate beauty and I go a little bit beyond appreciating the beauty of a car only to the point of what I feel is an expression of love,' he said."

It does make you think twice about Herbie the Love Bug.

Oh, in case you wondered: According to the Sun, Christina Aguilera has big breasts. I love how the Sun calls her "Xtina"--just like "Xmas"--but shouldn't that really be "Xina"?

Gargoyle of the Week


What's that you say? That's not a gargoyle, it's a planter or a birdbath or something? Well, sure, it is now, but the person who e-mailed me this picture said it has lead piping through it, suggesting it once performed a gargoylish function: sluicing rainwater away from a building. For reasons that will soon be clear, my source will remain anonymous. Let's just call him T.B. Player of Wolvercote. He explains how he came to possess it: "In '60s I worked for a uni science department out of an old converted house in South Parks Road (next to Rhodes House). This thing just lay in the garden with weeds over it. I asked various important people if I could have it but they were too busy. So one night I went down in my trusty Morris Minor and stole it. She's been with me ever since and now resides in the back garden of my current abode."

I wouldn't mind taking a gargoyle home with me when we return to the United States--which isexactly a month from today, as it happens. But we're already over our baggage allowance.

Blogging will probably be a little light next week. I really must finish my research paper. Have a great (holiday) weekend and thanks for reading.

He Shoots, He Scores: The Brave New Web

I am happy to report that after nine months at Oxford studying citizen journalism I have decided absolutely nothing.

No, that's not entirely true. I've learned a lot and arguably even formed a few opinions. (I sketched some of them out recently in a guest post at Kyle MacRae's Frontline Club blog.) But the main impression I have is of an industry--journalism--in a state of flux that is, depending on your particular outlook and constitution, either nauseating or exhilarating. Or a bit of both.

We're making the rules up as we go along. And how else would we do it? I'm reminded of James Naismith and the game he refined over years: basketball. Here's a great video re-creation of what that process may have been like. Naismith started out with peach baskets nailed to the wall rather than string nets around stiff metal hoops. The baskets still had the bottoms on them, until someone had the idea to cut them off. (Thus depriving some poor unskilled worker of a job: the ladder-climbing basketball basket-emptier.)

I know I'm stretching the analogy past the breaking point--traveling, you might say--but journalism today
probably hasn't cut the bottoms off its digital peach baskets. ("Digital Peach Basket": the new album by Moby.) That we're still finding our way is evident in two stories in today's Guardian. Reader' editor Siobhain Butterworth writes about altering, updating and correcting the paper's stories on the web. I don't completely understand the genesis of the column--something about a freelancer wanting to add material to an already-published piece--but I buy her central argument: You can't go around "invisibly" correcting/changing web stories, even if technology allows you to do just that.

Another issue is raised in a story about newspaper-sponsored blog sites. The Daily Telegraph allows anyone to start blogging under its umbrella (even me; I did it to test the process). Some 20,000 people have signed up and the Guardian points out that a few Telegraph readers have used the forum to promote the racist British National Party. What responsibility does the newspaper have? The Telegraph's Shane Richmond stirs up plenty of debate in his blog posting on that issue.

The irony is that the Guardian's Comment Is Free section is chockablock with vituperative backbiting of a most disagreeable nature. The Guardian points out that those sorts of comments are posted by readers in reaction to sanctioned bloggers and that the remarks are moderated (as are MyTelegraph's; and both sites allow readers to report posts they find beyond the pale). I suspect the Telegraph thinks this is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

But, see, this is us experimenting to see what works. Years from now we may look back and think it was crazy to host reader blogs, or we may wonder what all the fuss was about.

Video Killed the Internet Star
I was curious what sort of video quality my Canon compact digital camera was capable of, so I shot a couple of events this weekend. And, being the compleat digital journalist, I stuck them on YouTube. Here's some of the Summertown Street Festival (the fast-mo, slow-mo is an "arty" effect I added in iMovie):



And here's a bit of the Oxford Town & Gown 10K:




While I wouldn't want to use the camera to shoot an Indiana Jones movie, the quality's not too bad. And note that as of 9:30 this morning about a dozen people had watched each. True, that's not very many, but it's amazing that anyone watched them at all, given that I just slipped them into the great vat of YouTube content. There's probably a Long Tail point to be made here.

Stop Your Sobbing
Don't forget: "Flat Earth News's" Nick Davies, speaking in Cambridge tonight. I'll be there too.

I'm Sorry, So Sorry, Please Accept My Apology...

But journalism is blind, and I was too blind to see....

That's an updated version of the Brenda Lee song that the owner of the Daily Express and the Daily Star is singing today. This morning press baron Richard Desmond's two titles printed "unprecedented" front page apologies for their coverage of Madeleine McCann, the 3-year-old British girl who went missing last year in Portugal. Her parents had sued the papers, arguing that the Express and Star had basically convicted them of killing their daughter then covering up her death.

Of course, it's still possible that they did exactly that. But what both apologies say is that Kate and Gerry McCann are "completely innocent of any involvement in their daughter's disappearance."


The papers' apologies sound like one of those "corrections" in Private Eye: "Like every other English paper, The Daily Bastard may have given the impression that Kate and Gerry McCann were necromancers who had killed their child in a fit of Satanic bloodlust and supped upon her still-warm corpse. We now realise they are, in fact, wonderful, loving parents who only wanted the best for their daughter and that they should be hosting a BBC family holiday travel program. The Bastard regrets the error."

When the rest of my family saw the apologies this morning (after first berating me for buying those papers) each one said, "Oh, so they found her then?" They assumed there had been some resolution to the case. How else would the papers feel so confident to go to press with such a statement (completely innocent)? After all, according to Portuguese authorities the couple are still official suspects.

I'm not saying the McCanns did it, or even that I think they did it. Just that a newspaper should only say as much as it's confident it can say. Of course, if the Express and Star had done that from the start they wouldn't have had to shell out $1 million in damages, money that is going to a "find Madeleine" fund. I don't know what the specific articles that the McCanns complained about said, though I can imagine. There are parts of the British press that exist almost in another universe, newspapers that take a tiny shred of reality and construct a fantastical carapace around it. I admit it's entertaining, and I don't want to sound like one of those prudish press critics who writes as if afflicted with permanent heartburn, but the downside to such sensational coverage is apparent from what is on the front pages of those tabloids today: a total about-face based on no evidence due to the fact that their earlier stories were based on no evidence.

Shaned and Named
I'll write some time soon about a trip I took last week to the impressive offices of the Daily Telegraph. Impressive because of the total integration of Web and newspaper but also because of the physical layout of the newsroom. It's a bit like a zeppelin hangar combined with a Bond villain's lair: huge video screens display the web site, the top Telegraph web stories and various news channels. Desks are arranged in "hub and spoke" fashion. (Here's a YouTube tour.)

Shane is the Telegraph's communities editor, which means he keeps track of the multitude of reader contributions to the web site. The Telegraph has gone into this in a big way and on his blog Shane describes how he got his title.

Let the Sun Shine In
A bunch of great stories today about the McCartneys' divorce settlement, in which we learn that getting $50 million hasn't made Heather Mills any less crazy than she was before she got it. The best headline is in the Sun. Playing off the facts that Heather "Mucca" Mills once posed for nude photos and that the judge called her a liar, the Sun offered an elegant one-word head: "Pornocchio."

Friday Grab Bag: Drink Up Edition

Britain's new budget is out and starting Sunday a pint at the pub is going to be more expensive. Yesterday Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling announced an increase in the alcohol tax, a move he says is designed to stem the tide of binge-drinking.

Binge-drinking is a popular topic for the media here; newspapers are full of stories about plastered teenagers and vomiting shop assistants. I'm not out on the streets when the clubs close so I don't see the worst of it, but there are enough empty cans of cider and bottles of vodka in the park when I walk my dog each morning that I believe it's an issue. I don't see how this tax is going to address that, though.

The 4 pence increase on a pint of beer will probably be absorbed by supermarkets, where a pint averages 99p. The cost is unlikely to go up. Pubs are skating on thin ice, though. In a pub a pint costs 2.60. I expect that will rise. With their wafer-thing profit margins, pubs can't afford to eat it the 4p.

Just as frequent as binge-drinking stories are pub-closing stories. I don't sympathize with publicans who blame the smoking ban, but I do feel sorry that the new tax will hit them. I'd rather see store-bought alcohol get taxed more, with tax breaks for pubs. The government should encourage people to drink in the warm, lovely atmosphere of a pub, rather than on a park bench.

BritNews RoundUp
In her last movie, "The Golden Compass," Nicole Kidman's character had a "daemon," the animal manifestation of her soul. It was a nasty little monkey, but according to Britain's best-selling paper, the Daily Mail, another animal might be more appropriate. According to the paper, Kidman has used so much botox that she has the face of a bat. The Mail thoughtfully includes a pair of photos for comparison. That's Kidman on the left. (And if Kidman's daemon should be a bat, Britt Eklund's should be a trout, as this Mail story from a few months ago suggests.)

Poor Daily Mail. Lisa Marie Presley is suing the paper for calling her fat in an article last week. The story was really quite bitchy, illustrated with photos of Presley chowing down in a mall food court and featuring a faux "we're concerned she's eating herself to death, the way her father did" tone to it. I'd link to the piece but it's no longer on the paper's web site. I think that sort of screams guilt and I don't know why they're backing down. Presley is fat, but she has reason to be: She's pregnant.

If her strange prenatal cravings include asparagus, she might consult Jemima Packington, Britain's only "asparamancer." She uses stalks of asparagus the way others might use goose entrails or the I Ching. According to the Daily Telegraph: "Ms. Packington, from Worcester, throws the asparagus spears onto the floor and makes her predictions based on how they land." I predict you will watch this BBC video of her at work. I hope it doesn't make your pee smell funny.

Last month's news from Italy was that Italian men are no longer allowed to touch their genitals for luck. This month comes news that Italian women who commit adultery are allowed to lie about it. That was the ruling from Italy's highest court, who said that a 48-year-old woman referred to only as "Carla" did not make a false statement when she told police she did not lend her mobile phone to her lover. She was only protecting her honor. I love this line from the BBC's story: "She had lent her telephone to her secret lover, Giovanni, who then used it to call Carla's estranged husband, Vincenzo, and insult him." And Giovanni was probably making rude hand gestures while he was doing it.

The Mirror is looking for Britain's "sexiest fish and chip shop girl." I'm sure all that grease does wonders for the complexion.

I'll be spending today in London, or as participants in a survey by the TripAdvisor web site describe it: Europe's dirtiest and most expensive city.

Gargoyle of the Week


Okay, this isn't a gargoyle. It's a human face that seems to emerge from a house in Wolvercote, just north of Oxford. It's an odd little architectural feature, one of two visages that peer out of the light blue house:


To be honest, the faces are a little creepy, and I would worry that late at night, a little tipsy, they might give me a start. Of course, I can barely afford to get tipsy these days, let alone drunk.

But don't let that stop you. Have a great weekend and don't forget to tip your waitress.

Friday Grab Bag: BritNews RoundUp

Let's dive straight into the papers, shall we?

If you're looking for a reason to feel bad about your diet--or lack of one--read this BBC story about Oscar, a black lab who has just been named "pet slimmer of the year." "We used to feed him everything and anything," said the owner of the corpulent canine. "But then he collapsed and we thought he might have had a stroke."

Ya think? Oscar is relatively svelte now. Of course, it'd be easy for you to lose weight, too, if all you ate was what someone gave you.

In other animal news: What happens when you scatter sheep food in a perfect circle in a field? Well, this.

Regular readers of this blog know that I meticulously track the Daily Mail's fascination with women's breasts. That paper has an entire team devoted to the subject, sort of like the Times's old Insight team. But it isn't just the lascivious Mail that grabs on with both hands and won't let go. The Daily Telegraph is always looking for way to slip in photos of or stories about young women in low-cut tops. Yes, the staid Telegraph, mouth piece of the Conservative Party. The paper used to run so many photos of the lovely Elizabeth Hurley--the epitome of English dollybirdness to its landed male readers--that wags dubbed it the Hurleygraph.

The whole paper has been sexed up, energized with a 24/7 Web operation and a small army of bloggers, one of whom wrote about female birdwatchers on the Cayman Islands who are raising money with a racy calendar. And what sort of bird do they hope to help? The booby, of course.

Speaking of the Telegraph, I love these banners that appeared on its home page the other day:



Teenagers and old people. That about covers it.

Whoops: Woolworths has withdrawn a range of children's furniture after complaints over its name: The Lolita. "What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either," a Woolie's spokesperson told the Daily Mail. "We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now."

The furniture is being renamed The Joan Crawford.

Martin Amis explains to the Independent why he is not an anti-Muslim racist but the comment that gets the most press is his dismissal of Diet Coke as the "least cool of all drinks." Read the carbonated riposte from the Times.

Gargoyle of the Week
Every Friday in this space I've been offering my "Gargoyle of the Week," a service that I believe no other blog provides. I am proud of my weekly offering and yet I feel a little guilty, for not all of my gargoyles have been, strictly speaking, gargoyles. Many have been grotesques. (The difference? Gargoyles contain water spouts that direct rain away from buildings. Grotesques are fancifully-carved stone features. See here for more.)

I apologize to anyone I may have misled. I will, however, continue to call this feature "Gargoyle of the Week," since it is a snappier name than "Grotesque of the Week" or "Random Photo of Anthropomorphic Stone of the Week."

This week's offering is from my fellow Fellow Joyce, who snapped it at the St. Lorenz church in Nuremberg, Germany:



That's all for now. Have a great weekend and thanks for reading.