ANYONE who doubts the power of newspapers to hold the attention of readers might care to look at a video on YouTube which sees three advertising executives each given a newspaper to read in the back of their own chauffeur-driven car to work.
And then various potential distractions are thrown at them.
The astronaut is especially funny.
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BOY gets stuck up a chimney. Firefighters have to dismantle it, in order to free him. The Scotsman headlines the story: ‘Stuck in the middle with flue’.
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FANS of Media Broth will have noted the tale of the woman mobbed by a herd (if that’s the collective noun) of llamas.
It came to the attention of journalists attending the Scottish Student Journalism Awards, and of course, quick as a flash, someone piped up with the song title, Rama Lama Ding Dong.
But The Scottish Sun – on picking up the story the other day – did much better with its headline, accompanying its reporting of the story: Llama drama ding dong.
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YOU couldn’t move for professors. So, quite why allmediascotland.com was invited to offer its ‘tuppence worth’, goodness only knows.
Readers will be reassured to learn allmediascotland wasn’t even able to muster as much as that.
But there was no shortage of brilliant minds and ideas on display at ‘Securing Scotland’s Voice: The State of the Scottish National Press in the Digital Age’, hosted by the Centre for Cultural Policy Research at the University of Glasgow.
But it wasn’t without its moments of levity. “Monty Python-esque”, said co-host, Professor Philip Schlesinger, during his summing up.
First, the two cameramen on duty could be spied checking their headphones when – outside and repeatedly – one of those disconnected voices could be heard telling pedestrians that a vehicle was being reversed.
And then, just as author, broadcaster and blogger, Gerry Hassan, was in full flow, questioning just how combatative newspapers were during the supposed ‘Halcyon Days’ of the 1970s and 1980s, there was the loud splosh of sponge on windows.
NB. Not plain, old Gerry Hassan, but Dr Gerry Hassan – in keeping with the esteemed company.
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AS media courses – across Scotland’s universities and colleges – approach their summer holidays, David McKinney has his own way of describing the upcoming break.
The former STV football reporter and now head of media and drama at the City of Glasgow College, calls the holidays, the ‘Raymond Chandlers’.
In other words: The Big Sleep.
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