The Times is a conduit for shoddy journalism

I'm speechless, utterly speechless. I have just read the most vacuous, inflammatory, 'pandering to the masses' article that I've come across outside The Daily Mail. And it was in The Times for chris'sakes!!!

There's a new article on Times Online this morning called The Top 50 worst famous football fans. It's a populist and ill thought-out run down of the famous football fans that you wouldn't want to stand alongside on the terraces. Okay, so I recognise it's never going to be Tolstoy but when you look at the three worst fans as chosen by the muppet journo it takes on a darker tone.

1. Adolf Hitler (Schalke 04)
Hitler may have bombed Old Trafford, but he wasn’t a Manchester City fan. The Fuhrer had a soft spot for Schalke, who, funnily enough, were German champions six times between 1933 and 1945. “Winning a match,” Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, wrote, “is of more importance to the people than the capture of a town in the East.’” He obviously never went to a Norwich-Millwall game. (Yeah he probably never went to a Norwich-Millwall game, he was too busy killing millions of Jews - which isn't mentioned)

2. Russell Brand (West Ham United)
Potty-mouted “comedian” who minces about Upton Park pretending he owns the place. Also writes a pathetic weekly football column in The Guardian and called his autobiography “My Booky Wook”. (Called his autobiography "My Booky Wook"? What a Blackguard, what a cad! You say he left a nasty voicemail on Andrew Sach's phone? Well that's pretty much as serious as mass genocide in my book....)

3. Jon Gaunt (Coventry City)
We hate to kick a man when he’s down – “Gaunty” was sacked by TalkSPORT recently – but you probably wouldn’t want to sit next to everyone’s least favourite right-wing shock jock at a game.

What about Benito Mussolini (27)? What about 'Serbian paramilitary and ethnic cleanser' Zeljko “Arkan” Raznatovic (Red Star Belgrade and Obilic) (7)? What about Osama Bin - frickin' - Laden (5)? WHICH INSENSITIVE RETARD THOUGHT THAT A FASCIST DICTATOR WOULD BE MORE FUN TO CHAT TO ON THE TERRACES THAN HEATHER MILLS???? (I'm not sure I picked the best example here.)

I'm quite frankly ashamed that The Times has been caught up in the knee-jerk reactionism of Brandgate. The Times has been my rag of choice since I was 16, precisely because it had a reputation for balanced and well written reportage. Now it's just The Sun with fewer tits - Simon Barnes' nature report apart.

It's difficult to put my finger on exactly what offends me more about this article; the horrific imbalance of the piece and the ranking of its protagonists or the fact there isn't an associated podcast voiced by Jimmy Carr with thoughts by Stuart Maconie.

If anyone gives further work to the author of this dross, Kaveh Solhekol, then they'll be singlehandedly stabbing the heart of even-handed and decent journalism with a poison tipped dagger. I'm urging all of the combined editors and subs at The Times to stamp out this kind of lazy, gap-filling and pointless journalism. Let's raise standards, huh?

Favourite comment about John Sergeant walk-off

"You can't create a TV circus and then complain when the Hippo becomes the star"

Why? Because I came up with it.....I never said I wasn't a narcissist - or a genius! If I don't log my 'great sayings' then no-one else will.

Why does PR2.0 blind itself with numbers?

In his early autobiography, one of Stephen Fry’s schoolboy tormentors responds to a witty quip with, “Well you can prove anything with facts!” Turns out there’s more than a small parallel here with PR2.0 measurability.

A lot of conversations I’ve had around the subject of measurability in PR concern the fact that thanks to wündertools like Google Analytics and Technorati it is now possible to blanket every online campaign in numbers. The common consensus is that this is a good thing, I’d quite vehemently disagree.

The problem isn’t the numbers themselves, I take great pleasure in trawling through the stats on my campaigns, it’s the perception that I take great umbrage with. The fact is that numbers are meaningless without context and understanding. Numbers are like facts; unless you use them properly, you can come to any conclusion – something demonstrated on a regular basis by The Daily Mail.

In online especially, clients will respond to a campaign results presentation with the retort, “is that good?” Our job is not to push numbers at them – let’s be honest there are still plenty of things that we can’t measure – but to educate them on why what we’re doing is good for their business.

In a world where we still work with marketers who are comfortable with results delivered in column inches and advertising value equivalency we need to educate the value that we bring not try to blind with big numbers and scary acronyms.

Instead of replicating the bad practice of old and relying on meaningless, but seemingly useful, statistics like readership and OTSs – let’s be honest about the things we can’t measure and only use numbers where they actually add value. Now there’s an idea huh?

Now I’d love to know your thoughts on this……

Acronym of the day

ITCEC - In the current economic climate

See if you can use it in a sentence today.

What do I carry in my PR bag?

An embarrassingly long time ago now Alex Pearmain tagged me in a meme about the necessary essentials that every PR should carry around with them. In the interest of public decency I'll keep my list fairly clean and restrict it to no more than five items as you guys don't want to hear me drone on.

1. A moleskin notebook (if PETA is reading this, it's not actually made from Mole carcasses) which I use to record all of my thoughts, doodles and impressions including the much maligned Team Twitter logo.
2. A book - often something intelligent looking that I can place cover up on tables at bars and use to entice intellectual females. I call it fishing for girls. Haven't caught a damn thing yet.
3. A copy of The Times with a well-thumbed sport section and fairly untouched business section.
4. A pen vacuum. Much like my sock drawer, my bag contains a portal to another dimension where pens disappear to die and be refilled.
5. Carrier bags and small change.

There, that wasn't so hard was it?