I’ve started ploughing my way through Brian K Vaughan’s Ex Machina, a comic book series in which the world’s only superhero becomes New York City’s mayor in a post 9/11 America. An alternate history, political satire and down-to-earth superhero tale (well, as down-to-earth as you can get with a superhero), it’s smart, snappy and well-plotted. It’s easy, then, to see why Vaughan was made co-producer of Lost so that its flabby plot could be tightened up. (More on that here.)

Vaughan’s other big work is Y: The Last Man, a recently concluded graphic series following the only male to have survived a plague that wiped out all the rest. It’s an expensive business catching up on collected comic books; Ex Machina averages at about €15 per paperback of five issues. But it’s damned addictive. You can download a free PDF of Ex Machina #1 at DC’s website. And you can download Y: The Last Man’s first issue here.

The second Newsroom Barometer results, a survey of 700 newspaper editors senior news executives from 120 countries, was released this week. It makes for interesting reading.

Among the main results this year:

- 86% believe integrated print and online newsrooms will become the norm, and 83% believe journalists will be expected to be able to produce content for all media within five years.

- Two-thirds believe some editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom opposition to the practice.

- A plurality - 44% - believe on-line will be the most common platform for reading news in the future, compared with 41% last year. Thirty-one cited print (down from 35% last year), 12% mobile and 7% e-paper. The rest were unsure.

- 35% said training journalists in new media was the number one priority for investing in editorial quality. Recruiting more journalists was cited by 31%, up from 22% last year.

- A majority of editors - 56%- believe news in the future will be free, up from 48% from last year’s survey. Only one-third believe the news will remain paid for, while 11% were unsure.

- Two-thirds of respondents believe the importance of opinion and analysis pages will increase.

- A majority - 58% - think the decline in young readership is the biggest threat for the future of newspapers.

It gives me an excuse to mention a quote recently included in this blog post and which could be plastered on every wall, in every newspaper on the planet:

In case some of the mainstream media haven’t got this yet - “THE WEB DOES NOT OWE YOU A LIVING”.

It doesn’t care that you have been doing this for years, you have to earn your eyeballs like everyone else.

There was no better time than last week in which to put a lead story on your property section, explaining how to convert your cellar into living space. Well done, Sunday Business Post.

Adding a basement offers homeowners a way to add value and free up space.

We see them as dank and dingy places where you dump the suitcases after a holiday, or store mildewed maths textbooks. I once viewed a house in which the tenants had painted the word redrum (in a tribute to The Shining) over the lintel on the way down to one.

But the humble basement has become a swanky space in many London homes, with owners digging down instead of trading up in order to find more space. From the look of the interiors photographs of these high-end conversions, basement accommodation is becoming more a case of Grand Designs than Murder, She Wrote.

Well, not always…

One of Britain’s most successful new newspapers is First News, which targets the 7-14 age group. Its most recent ABCs show an average weekly sale of over 38,000, but its readership is an impressive 763,000 because one in five UK schools subscribes. There are more details about its background and its upcoming second anniversary at Roy Greenslade’s blog.

Its editorial is a mix of environmental, third-world and animal stories, and it seems to be a print version of Newsround, a programme which I still believe was the most important I ever watched, given where I’ve ended up. (Press Gang comes a close second.)

First News, though, gives us a glimpse at a market that is increasingly important for “grown-up” papers. At the Irish Times, you can see the push on the regular Cúl for Kids GAA magazines as proof of that. The myriad posters in the British press are aimed at school walls as much as general readers. Does it attract readers for life? I don’t know, but it attracts sponsorship in a thriving area, boosts circulation and means that newspaper branding gets blue-tacked onto many, many walls.

For those outside either outside the motor-racing scene or its heartland areas, the death of Martin Finnegan at the Tandragee 100 last weekend may not really register. To get a sense of how big a figure he was in a sport that gets little coverage despite its popularity here, I’m posting a couple of videos of the convoy that brought him home to Lusk on Monday.

It takes a full five minutes for the convoy to pass in the first clip. The second shows the reception given to him by the people of his home town, Lusk.

‘THERE IS, of course, no ending to history,” Bertie Ahern told the joint Houses of Congress on Wednesday. History was a popular word in his speech, mentioned nine times. And history was a word commonly used in the run-up to his big moment. It would be, we were told repeatedly, an “historic” address. Afterwards, it was confirmed across the board that the Taoiseach had indeed “made history”.

We’ll come back to that later, because history was created elsewhere this week. At the Crucible theatre in Sheffield, in fact, where, according to several newspaper and radio reports, the English player Ali Carter “made history” by making this the first World Championships in which maximum 147 breaks have been scored twice in one tournament. “Made history,” no less.

Yes, the name of Carter, Slayer of the Baize shall be uttered through the aeons.

In the media, history is made every day. Sometimes it is made several times a day. It is reported so much, in fact, that the term now holds as much value as a Zimbabwean tenner. (more…)

Saw this in Metro this morning, and then Nat reminded me of it earlier, so following Padre Pio’s appearance on this blog last week (he’s definitely had some work, don’t you think?) here’s the picture of “Jesus on a cider bottle”.

Unfortunately, it was thrown in the bin by a now hell-bound barmaid, but not before a picture was taken. The Daily Mail’s report features an interview with the man who found it:

“When I saw it I got goose pimples,” 35-year-old Mr Cartwright said yesterday. “I have no doubt it is the face of Jesus. You can even see his beard and hair.”

“I’m not sure what message Jesus was sending and maybe now we’ll never know.”

Jesus, as ever, has been busy making personal appearances. FoxNews.com reports that a woman found him in an ultrasound. He’s also recently appeared in a piece of candy, a shower stain, a flapjack and on television.

I was griping with someone earlier about how dry The View is - the only regular arts programme on RTE television, and not worth staying up for - and how BBC2’s Late Review has become of a caricature of itself. And I was reminded of how fresh and ambitious the BBC’s Culture Show can be, and specifically how this piece on skiffle music, by Mark Kermode, was one of the best packages I’ve seen on television over the last couple of years.

Top moment: Kermode giving a piece to camera while playing double bass with his skiffle band.

From today’s Letters page. Thought it was worth posting:

Madam, - I am writing to you as a journalist and a concerned member of the National Union of Journalists. I’m concerned because, in my opinion, more and more reporters and sub-editors, especially in certain tabloid newspapers, are simply making up stuff and allowing it go to print.

There is massive pressure on many journalists working on big stories, a pressure which comes from certain news desks demanding they have the “real” story first and that a rival doesn’t scoop them.

In relation to the Clonroche tragedy, The Irish Daily Mail this week reported that six-year-old Mark Flood “was woken by a shotgun blast. . .left his bedroom and went out to the landing to see what had happened and this is where he died at the hands of his deranged father”.

In fact Mark died in his bed and never left his bedroom. This report must have been a terrible thing for relatives to read, especially when it just wasn’t true. Similarly, at least one article in the Irish Daily Mirror this week speculated on what thoughts were going through Diarmuid Flood’s mind and on his relationship with his wife Lorraine. Pure and utter conjecture, not grounded in the truth. And the use of the words “deranged” in the Mail and “Evil” on the front page of the Irish Sun does nothing to help people who are suffering depression or know people who have taken their own lives.

The NUJ’s code of conduct specifies that a journalist has a duty to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards and strive to ensure the information he/she disseminates is fair and accurate. There are also guidelines for the media on the portrayal of suicide.

Journalists, editors and sub-editors should read them. The Press Council should also investigate recent matters. Gardaí too have a responsibility to work more closely with journalists and avoid information vacuums which spawn lies and innuendo.

Journalists in Ireland have, in the main, a great tradition of telling the truth and we have spent decades building up the respect of the public. That respect is being undermined by relentless pressure from the market, the competition between newspapers and the stupidity of some journalists in failing to check the facts.

The headlong rush for circulation is ruining the proud tradition of journalism. - Yours, etc,

DAMIEN TIERNAN,
Chairperson,
NUJ Irish South-East Branch,
and Chair of the NUJ Irish Executive Council,
Passage East,
Co Waterford.