NORTHERN PLANNER

And so to the Times. This was the last planned paper in this experiment, but I may as well push on and do the Star, Independent and Guardian in the next week or so.

First of all, it’s a lot to get through – 32 pages on pure news, with opinion sandwiched in the middle. By the time I got to the world section, I was worn out.

While not as straight as The Telegraph, the stories are delivered in a serious manner and seem pretty objective. It’s interesting to see that, similar to The Guardian, they include ‘briefings’ from experts next to the big stories and issues. Very useful, adding more context, but there’s a danger that these can slip into opinion rather than analysis.

I never watch ITN News for this reason. reporters on site never seem to deliver the facts, instead they tell is what they think the facts mean.

My own personal view is that I like reading stuff with a bit of meat, some argument – but that’s only because I listen to a lot of straight news on the radio. It comes down to whether you want more depth and discussion to add to what you know, or you just want to know what’s going on I suppose.

I found the comment section a good read. Dense with strong arguements, well backed up, I espescially liked Mary Ann Sieghart’s analysis of David Miliband. Incidentally, I find it sad that our country seems to pick looks and likeability over experience and talent, but there you go.

The world section was meaty, and I have to admit that I prefer it to The Guardian. While the Guardian’s international coverage is equally robust, on reflection, the delivery is quite biased, sometimes with more ‘background’ and briefing than actual fact.

The sport was packed with a fair cross section of stuff that wasn’t football, although I found the writing more ‘tabloid’ than I expected.

But after all that, I simply couldn’t be bothered with Times2, which may have been a shame, but it wasn’t helped by a layout that suggested everything was going to take ages to read. I just don’t have the time.

So I’ll be coming back to The Times for international news, but overall, I got a little bored. On the other hand, if I’ve missed the news, this may be the place I go.

Few would disagree that Global Warming has moved from a peripheral issue to one of the defining challenges for mankind. But on the grand scale of Earth’s history, it’s still pretty cold. The polar ice caps have come and gone many times.

The last ‘Ice Age’ never ended, we’re still in it. It just happens that we’re in an ‘interglacial period’ or a bit of a lull. No one is entirely sure why these lulls ebb and flow, but if nature was allowed to run its course, we’ll be plunged into a worldwide freeze again before it gets very, very hot.

When stuff like this is so finely balanced, it puts our messing with the climate into perspective.

All it takes for an Ice Age to come about is one bad summer where less ice melts than usual. More heat from unmelted snow gets reflected, even less ice melts, less heat again, more ice and on it goes.

They believe that at one point, the entire planet was covered in ice and it took a volcanic eruption to to reverse it. Meteroligists believe this gave us the most chaotic weather ever, with winds whipping up tidal waves to skycraper levels.

Incidentally, there was brief reverse of our Ice Age lull in the 15,000’s, when the Arctic Ice Sheet went as far as the Orkneys, and  humans were responsible for it’s end thanks to the Black Death. The catastrophic loss of life resulted in abandoned farmland being covered by trees, and the extra carbon dioxide absorbtion dropped the temperature.

So we move on to the Sun. I’ll review today’s Times on Monday.

This is the paper that alledgedly decides British General Elections, easiest the nations best selling newspaper. If you want to get into the mindset of the people, this is a good start.

First off, Page 3. Today it’s Keeley. It doesn’t stop with the press though, you can text a number and get more saucy pics on your mobile. A British insitution or a bastion of sexism? Dunno.

Front page is devoted mainly to David Beckham’s move to L.A. Which is fair enough, according to a Learning Skills Council survey last year, he’s still a big role model.

The Paper follows a similar format to The Mirror, a bit a news, a bit of opinion and loads of gossip and lifestyle. Which is fair enough, this what they want to know about.

The main front section news stories are The Home Office fiasco and a deperssingly small report on Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq.

Naturally the subtle tone is at odds to The Mirror. As opposed to John Reid ‘sorting out’ the problems, The Sun has him ‘knowing nothing’. The opinion section includes, ‘labour has lost the war on MRSA’. The Sun’s true colours are clear. It’s unclear yet if Ruper Murdoch will support Cameron or Brown, but he’s certainly had enough of Blair.

So that’s the tabloids finished. I can also tell you that the Express is a watered down Mail and the Star is not really a newspaper. Is it a problem that there is little real, factual news? I suppose not, I don’t believe you can ram serios issues down people’s throats if they’re not interested. These papers give their audience exactly what they ask for – The Mirror’s slump in sales when it went serios shows that.

I was a bit harsh on the Mirror yesterday, since their bending of the facts is no worse than the Sun. All papers have an agenda, red top or no (although we’ll see what the Times is like), all use fact to fit whatever they want to say. I’ve more of a concern with the Mail and the Express that pretend to be serious.

That said, I find it disturbing that the tabloids choose what to report. it’s one thing to have a more fun balancem it’s another to only report on the things you want to people to know.

Thanks to the newspaper project, naturally I’ve been thinking about what really matters to people and how to include them in politics, espescially the young and by happy coincidence I found this at PSFK. Myspace US is launching a competition called where members post a 60 second film of their views on the state of America and what needs to change.

It seems a million miles smarter than Webcameron, which strikes me as thinly veiled propaganda, viewed by the young as an old fart trying to be down with the kids (This anti-debt campaign is better, seeded on the web, but it’s still older people tell kids what to do).

Isn’t it a universal truth that the young think the old haven’t a clue? Espescially when it concerns what really matters to them. At the same time, social media and it’s endless niches mean that kids can shut out the adult world more than ever, and they have a very strong bullshit detector.  Asking them to tell US what we should do, on their terms makes a lot of sense. If they they’re not interested in our agenda, asking them to help us set it seems very credible,  and we may just learn something.

I had a conversation on the phone last night with an old friend. It doesn’t matter what it was about, but it reminded me that when you get older, friends become like family.

I don’t mean in the surrogate family sense – you know young people who have all moved away to different cities –  but real family. People you’ve grown to love and belong with – like it or not

At some point in your life you realise there’s some people you know better than anyone. You have a shared history that no one else will ever match. Others have come and gone along the way, but these are the people you’ve chosen to be your friends for life, consciously or not. They’re not perfect, they wind you up but you love them anyway. Just like your real family.

  It’s a wonderful, comforting thing, but like all relationships, it needs work. With marriage, kids, work and whatever else, it’s easy to neglect them, just like you sometimes forget to call Mum. But, apart from Mrs Hovells, I don’t laugh with anyone like I laugh with my lot, no one else ‘gets me’ and accepts my faults. I’m odd, always have been, so are they and that’s a real joy.

One’s thing for sure, the days of Piers Morgan are well and truly over. A while back he tried to make the Mirror a more serious paper and cover issues in depth. Sales plummeted.

No wonder then that the front page is devoted to Leona from the X Factor. Most of the paper is devoted to the gossipy lifestyle stuff we saw in the Mail, in fact the only real difference is that The Mirror is clearly pitched at a lower income bracket. The sport is virtually all football hyperbole with some racing thrown in.

Interesting on page two, which is like a longform contents page with a precis of what will be covered – basically sport, showbiz and opinion. The news bit is a couple of snapshots not covered elsewhere.

This is where The Mirror first reveals it’s loyalties. ‘Blair to make his personal plane journeys carbon neutral’ and ‘a massive 95% cut in government websites will be launched today …to slash red tape…and give a better service to the public’. That’s it.

Two news pages. One devoted to the US air strikes at the Al Qaeda tatgets in Somalia. The title, ‘PAYBACK’. Interestingly, the other page is scathing article on the home office. Sounds like they’re not so loyla after all, except a caption reads ‘Mr Reid has demanded a majot probe’. ‘A probe is already underway to discover how he was left in the dark’. In other words, it’s not the government’s fault and they’ll sort it out. Neat.

As for Kevin Maguire, with the only ‘news opinion’ in the paper, he has a pop at Cameron glossing over his priveledged background and manages to turn the Ruth kelly private school affair into a pop at the Tories as well, as ‘the small band defending (her)splurging of £15,000 to buy private tuition….is dominated by Tories’. ‘do not underestimate (Gordon Brown’s) fury over the row she triggered. Very clever.

So the is perfectly pitched to it’s audience. Lots of interest and lifestyle. Nothing wrong with that, it’s what sells, but what little real news there is little more than thinly veiled propaganda. The only reason I prefer it to The Mail is that it doesn’t use limited, bent facts to prove it’s argument.

‘Let’s see what’s out there’.

Jason’s got an interesting quote on planning. Gemma’s new blog is already a place for useful advice like this and this. Love have some sober reflections on the future. Interuption is a word you here a lot these days, Marcus has a post that gives another perspective and is also a cracking read. One Woman Running is planning coffee for young creatives, but planners don’t seem to like any coffee morning without them and are muscling in. Jason from LB Toronto has interesting thoughts on how to treat your target audience. Now that Rob Mortimer has got broadband sorted, he’s rearing himself away from the Wii and posting regularly again. His review of last year is up to the usual Mortimer standards. This post from Helen about episodic storytelling made me thing about the value of a good story. Beeker’s having fun with unplugged night. JamesB continues to give us meaty stuff to think about, like this post on human relations and materialism. Rob is scared of the Iphone and he’s got some wide observations on the rubbish they sell in airports. Finally, Scamp has some good advive on getting to meet creatives and meeting Gwen Yip. Good for teams after their first job, great for planners looking for ways to develop relationships in other departments,

I tried, I really tried. But the headline of yesterday’s Daily Mail didn’t start us off well. The leader screamed, "A lesson in hypocrisy" and went on to describe the alleged double standards of Ruth Kelly (cabinet minister) who’s is sending her child to a £17,000 a year private school. The rights or wrongs of this are up to you, maybe you think people in government are honour bound to make an example, maybe you think people have the right to do what they think is best for the kids. But the tone of the article persuades you to one point of view only.

The rest of the news section carries on in pretty much the same way, I can honestly say that I find it hard to find out what happened yesterday. Most of it is argument, with few facts. When there are facts, they are skillfully used to highlight one side of the story. This is fine for editorial of course, but not for the ‘news’ section (in my opinion).

For example, there’s an article that discusses the rise in the cost of living. The headline reads, ‘The sums that sink Labour’s (notice Labour. not government) claim of 2.7pc inflation rate’ – before you go further they’re making your mind up for you. The government puts the rise in the cost of living since 1997 at 15%. It’s based on the retail price index, which they rightly point out leaves out housing costs and council tax.

But here’s the rub. ‘The tories say that the typical family is paying £9, 925 more in mortgage payments. in tax…..’. There are more things the tories say, but notice that the government figures are official, yet the Tories ‘claim’. But this ‘sinks Labour’s 2.7% claim’. Now they move on to state some figures, but this is in the last third of the article where most attention spans have gone. Helen suggested that part of this little project should include Andrew Marr’s excellent book, A short History of Journalism and I think she’s right. For now, one thing I remember is that articles are designed to get the story out in the first paragraph, as the further someone reads, the less likely they are to take it in. People skim the first para and decide to move on, or not. One last thing, nowhere do they mention what the rise in average income is compared to the rise in the cost of living, and anyway, mortgages have risen with the free market, surely a Daily Mail staple? Or they after a bigger state?

The comment section is huge. There’s David Seymour convinced that pay as you throw rubbish collections are a money making wheeze, not about recycling. He may have a point, but at least it will encourage us to waste less. A good thing surely.

The Mail then comes into its own, with about 15 pages of Hello magazine type gossip, style, diets and health. If you thought The Mail wasn’t a housewives paper, this should change your mind.

Then the sport falls in to the trap of the front of paper. Less results and analysis, more headlines,and mostly football.

So overall, I got what I was expecting. Opinion, lifestyle and and little else. But  of course, bearing in mind the audience, it’s easy to say this is fine, it’s what they think, so give them what they want. It does become a bit frustrating when these factoids get quoted to you though in conversation though.