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t used to be thought that the newspaper you read said everything about the kind of person you are. Is that still true today?
How do you choose your newspaper? Is it great writing, great sports coverage, your upbringing or something else? Or do politics still influence your choice?
Robert Scoble is in London this week before he heads over to Le Web 3 (Loic Le Muers web technology conference) in Paris.
However before he left London he slated British media by saying (and I quote)
Robert Scoble wrote:
Now that I’m over in London I get to see the media that Valleywag ispatterned after. Over here they don’t have really serious newspapers.That’s what the BBC is for, after all. But every store sells thesegossip papers that scream at you with huge type. They go for the mostsalacious of topics. Just like Valleywag does.
This comment made a few of his readers rather mad with over 10 comments devoted to this one statement, one commentator said:
Christopher Coulter wrote:
You, sir, need to go back to journalism school, maybe actually gettingthat degree will help. Fundamental misunderstanding of the historicalBritish tabliod press, the news coverage can be deep and fierce,American tabloids are but celebrity gossip hangovers, with most of theDailies, just doing AP Wire and Local Features. Even the big Gray guns,operate in a analysis-style safe-mode, leaving more of the bigger andmore important investigative pieces to the Monthlies. The glory of theAmerican Aurora and the 18th Century acidic bite has long since past.
Scoble should probably think before he writes statements like those and I'm sure Valleywag will have something to say about this matter, for the full post you can find it here.
The media in the UK is some of the best in the world. In the US, as the Independent today reported, there were no follow up headlines on the shooting of 6 by a gunman with an AK47 in a Nebraska shopping mall; whereas if it has either in the a muslim or islamic extremist, there would be "breaking news" banners over their toy-town TV stations.
In the UK, if even three people were shot dead they would get dignified impartial coverage of press conference after press conference and probably a panorama documentary.
Lets not get in to the whole US gun culture debate; however if you read The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and The Sun - you will probably gain the most balance and broad news written and sourced by the best journalists in the world; unlike the the mere toilet paper in the US, give or take a few like the New York Times.
Going back to the "Scoble" issue his statement was noticed by Jemima Kiss who writes for the Guardian, she talked about his statement on the guardian digital content blog, here.
Quote:
Gracing Europe with his presence this week is celebrity blogger Robert Scoble - currently dealing with a stream of disgruntled readers after he said there are no serious newspapers in the UK.
Scoble has a well-documented hate-hate relationship with Silicon Valley's gossip blog Valleywag (as does the brilliant Fake Steve Jobs) and was trying to make a point about how it fulfills the role that tabloids fulfill in the UK.
"Now that I'm over in London I get to see the media that Valleywag ispatterned after. Over here they don't have really serious newspapers.That's what the BBC is for, after all. But every store sells thesegossip papers that scream at you with huge type. They go for the mostsalacious of topics. Just like Valleywag does. After all, if Scoblepicks his nose, that's more interesting than what Oracle announced in apress release this morning, right? Heh."
He goes on explain how to dupe the site into publishing a dodgystory, but judging by the comments on the post, no-one was reallyinterested in that