In some ways, watching a dying industry attempt a caterpillar-like metamorphosis is as fascinating as following a nascent one. It’s genuinely intriguing to see the choices different players make about which parts of their former selves they retain, which they reject, and what new elements they add to their products. For this 2D post, I’ve picked out two articles which look at very different responses to those challenges.

The first is an article from the Columbia Journalism Review by Peter Canby about the fact-checking process at the New Yorker, and the way in which that process has morphed under economic pressure. I’ve never before seen such a clear admission from anyone – other than, perhaps, The Guardian – that mistakes happen.

Ultimately we make mistakes. I wish we didn’t, but they are inevitable and constant.

Admitting a problem is, as they say, the first step to addressing it. This article suggests to me the the New Yorker has invested a great deal of effort in working out how to minimise errors without maximising costs, and continues to do so.

At the other end of the spectrum, as Martin Robbins describes in the New Statesman, the Daily Mail has taken a rather different approach, seemingly involving a rather strong dose of hypocrisy.

The coverage of Kick Ass star Chloe Moretz at the age of 14 contains some classic examples: looking “all grown up” she was “every inch the classy young lady” at a film premiere, for example. All this comes from a newspaper campaigning vigorously against ‘sexualisation’ and its impact on children.

I personally find the Daily Mail‘s approach distasteful, but it’s hard to deny that it has been successful. Mail Online is now the world’s most popular news website (perhaps “news” should be in inverted commas), with almost double the number of unique browsers of the BBC News website. Vox populi, vox dei – or at least vox populi, vox argentum. If this is what most people want to read, perhaps we should be a little more respectful towards their art in our tone, even if we make the argument no less forcefully that the protection of the individuals concerned should be paramount. Or perhaps we should focus on the underlying problems of society, rather than the newspaper-based symptoms. I don’t know.

2D posts appear on alternate Wednesdays. For 2D, I pick two interesting articles that look at an issue from two different – though not necessarily opposing – perspectives. I hope you enjoy them! The photo at the top of this post was posted to Flickr by Jon S and has been used under Creative Commons Licence.

Melanie Phillips has been on Question Time twice as often as all scientists put together over the last 18 months. There is still this feeling of “Why would you put a scientist on a current affairs discussion programme?”

Mark Henderson, formerly science editor at The Times, but now with the Wellcome Trust, makes this interesting point in a piece about the media coverage surrounding the discovery of the Higgs boson. It was published in the eighth issue of the marvellous Delayed Gratification.

Wendy bought me the second season of The Killing on DVD for Christmas, and I’m already fairly well into it…! I loved the first season; it was truly superlative TV. If you haven’t seen it yet, then you really should find the time! I’m very much enjoying this second season too.

I came late to The Killing, only catching up with it a couple of months ago when it appeared on Netflix… which meant that I devoured the whole series in no time at all! I then got such strong withdrawal symptoms that I started watching the US remake… which was truly awful!

Iain Dale blogged about Borgen earlier today, which is another series I’ve heard consistently brilliant things about, but haven’t yet found the time to watch. Perhaps it should be my next box set…!

I came across the former entrance to the Granada Studios Tour today, which has (in an act that looks a lot like corporate vandalism) been painted a single block of colour and had ITV’s uninspired corporate logo slapped on the front.

It’s a sad sight. I visited the Granada Studios Tour a few times in my childhood – I have particularly strong memories of visiting with school when the whole complex was rented out for the whole school in celebration of the principal’s significant birthday.

The Tour closed abruptly in 1999, one of the casualties of ITV’s financial rationalisation after the collapse of ITV Digital. There’s talk of the Museum of Science and Industry taking over the complex when Granada vacates it next year, though there remains a real threat of the land being sold and this keystone site in our national cultural heritage being flattened – especially after English Heritage’s baffling decision not to grant the site Listed status.

So, in case it’s in a skip this time next year, here’s another picture of the complex’s iconic Granada TV logo:

Tyne Tees is one of the few areas of the UK where Ceefax is still available… but not for much longer! In 12 days, this region will complete digital switchover and we’ll lose Ceefax forever.

The degree to which this really doesn’t matter to me personally is exemplified by the fact that it’s taken me about 10 minutes to work out how to get it on my current TV…! But I used to use it quite a lot, so I feel a little bit sad to know that it will no longer be there!

This is, of course, BBC Television Centre. Wendy and I were here for a tour today, and also got roped in to being in the audience of a daytime quiz show!

It’s very much a building of its time. It now has a slightly eerie deserted feeling to it – for me, it was a bit reminiscent of working in Newcastle General Hospital right before it closed down. That said, it was a great tour, and I’m glad we took the chance to do it while we could!

If you judge your bloggers by the photos they take, then I expect you won’t be very impressed with me today.

Last night, I visited the art deco masterpiece that is the BBC’s Broadcasting House and its Radio Theatre, but emerged with only a single photograph showing this gimmicky interpretation of the BBC logo, from the Media Cafe.

I was there to watch a recording of Arthur Matthews’s new comedy, The Golden Age. It was very funny. There was even a small amount of audience participation, including singing – I expect that I, along with the rest of the audience, will be signed by Simon Cowell as soon as it’s aired. It was quite interesting to see a Radio 4 audience in the flesh: the stereotypes are all true!

Peering through the window of the Media Cafe, it was fascinating to see the new newsroom. From that perspective, it seemed rather smaller than I’d imagined, though it still looked like a pretty nice office to work in. There was also a corner upstairs for BBC Weather, which surprised me somewhat – I thought all that was done at the Met Office.

Anyway, it was an interesting experience – and free as well. I’d definitely go back!

YouView could entice a large cache of older viewers too technologically timid to hook their set up to a games console to view the world of TV a little differently.

So said The Guardian this morning. It seems that, for YouView to be successful, Lord Sugar is relying on customers who are all of the following:

1. Too tech timid to hook up a games console, but tech confident enough to hook up a YouView box using an almost identical method.
2. Too money-conscious to spend cash on a Sky, Virgin, or BT Vision subscription (all of which offer – or will soon offer – most of the new features), but happy to spend £200 on a box whose additional online functionality is broadly comparable to that of a £49 Roku box.
3. Have a broadband connection (or are willing to pay for one), despite tech timidity and money-consciousness.

That doesn’t strike me as a huge market… but perhaps I’m underestimating the power of its big-name backers!

Every now and again, I find myself moaning to Sky News about some report or other they’re running, usually on a medical topic. This might put me in the same box as the green-ink angry brigade of old, but I kind of hope it doesn’t.

Sky News is normally the outlet on the receiving end of my moans because Wendy likes to watch Sunrise in the mornings, so they tend to be the ones to irk me when I’m sleepy-eyed and vulnerable. Usually, they’ve misunderstood the findings of some piece of research, or are giving advice that needs a little more nuance. Generally, I fire off an email to them, and they correct either their script or package pretty quickly, or else get back to me to explain why they won’t. I actually think I have a pretty good relationship with them.

A few years ago when the whole MTAS debacle was kicking off in the medical world, I helped Channel 4 News with some of their reporting, and also found them really helpful, willing to listen to my explanations, and good at accurate reportage.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I don’t think I’ve ever complained about a BBC News report. But then, the BBC News website published this article about the Queen’s faith role. This couldn’t be further from the stuff I’d usually moan about, but the report was based on a COMRES poll, and originally opened with the claim that 80% of the population supported the Queen’s faith role. I didn’t believe this, and so checked out the original data on the COMRES website, which revealed that 80% responded positively to a question about whether the Queen has a faith role. This is, of course, different from giving support – it’s a question of fact, and, as the Queen is the head of the Church of England, it seems pretty undeniable that she has a faith role, whether or not it’s supported.

So I fired off an email. And, within hours, the article was changed to the current version, which reports the actual survey findings more accurately. What I hadn’t anticipated, and hadn’t had from any other outlet, was that the Religion Editor gave me a call. We had a great chat in which he explained how the article had come about, how the mistake had been made, and also a general talk about the complex rules that the BBC has around commissioning surveys. This was fantastic.

So what’s my point? Essentially, any time I personally have moaned to a media outlet about a factual reporting error, I’ve received a positive response. Granted, it would be better that the mistakes weren’t there in the first place, and it’s probably true that not all sections of the media are as responsible as those I’ve been involved with.

But journalists are humans too. They make mistakes, and many of them seem happy to have these corrected. Leveson might give the impression that all journalists are unethical idiots, and Blair might think they’re feral beasts, but some journalists are just doing a bloody hard job as well as they can, with the utmost professionalism.

I know it’s not a popular view at the moment, but maybe we can consider giving journalists a break sometimes? Just a thought.