Paparazzi doorstep ban

Paparazzi agency Big Pictures and its founder Darryn Lyons have agreed not to follow Sienna Miller nor to doorstep her at home as part of a £53,000 settlement for harassment and privacy. In a related case, The Sun and The News of the World paid her £35,000 in damages.

They will be allowed to photograph her in nightclubs, at red carpet dos and at other public events, the Guardian reports.

The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (UK) allows a someone to sue over actions which cause them alarm or distress. To win the case, they have to show that the conduct of the defendent occurred in circumstances where a reasonable person would have realised harassment would be the effect.

The day-to-day activities of press photographers would not normally be considered harassment but they must take care that their behaviour would not be judged by a reasonable person to cause alarm or distress.

Blogging stimulates new language

The word blog has spawned 214 derivatives according to Damp Squid by Jeremy Butterfield including:

• Blogger
• Blogosphere
• Blogospheric
• Blogospherical
• Blogroll
• Bloggerati
• Bloggocks
• Blogstipation
• Bloglish

Story: dancer leaves, no-one dies

John Sergeant announced today that he is leaving Strictly Come Dancing.

The former political commentator is to leave the TV dance show voluntarily. His departure will have little real impact on the world.

So why is it that major news sources rank this story so highly? It is currently in number two or three slot on many British news websites, even the serious ones.




News editors decide the ranking of stories based on news value. They balance a number of criteria:

• The scale (the number of people who die, the size of the explosion)
• The impact (the number of British people who die, whether the explosion is in Ipswich or Kasakhstan)
• Shock value (motor racing boss in orgy scandal, toddler beaten up)
• Emotional reaction (toddler goes missing on holiday)
• Humanity (how much we care about the people involved)
• Drama

It is the last of these that drives the Sergeant story. It is a classic underdog drama — a fat journalist winning a dance competition against all the odds and then backing out at the last minute. You could make a Hollywood movie about it.

It is easy to underestimate the importance of drama when one evaluates news. After all, what we write are called stories. The better they work as a story, the higher their ranking as news.

John Sergeant's dancing story also reminds us that we cannot often decide what our readers will choose to care about.

Writing to be found

Google-friendly writing techniques ensure that as many people will see your stuff as possible (it helps for search engine optimisation [SEO]):

• Update your site as frequently as possible
• Think of the words that people will search on if they want to find your page
• Use those words
• Do not use elegant variation unless synonyms are also words people will search for
• Make sure key words are in prominent positions
• Scoops, opinion and major facts will encourage linking
• Independence, balance and authority also help
• Be generous to sources and they will be generous to you
• Include as much detail as you can at the deepest levels of your site

Google Trends is a useful way to see what people are actually searching for.
Webconfs has a useful keyword density checker.

Web site colours

Colour schemes in web design should be kept simple but that doesn't mean they have to be boring.

Pick a colour you like in Adobe Photoshop (or similar) and have a look its hue value (H). This is an angle around the colour wheel (red is at the top -- 0deg). If you keep the H value constant but vary the saturation (S) and brightness (B) you can create a range of colours that all work together.



A website can use five or six different colours and it will not look cluttered if they all have the same H value.

Photoshop translates the colour into the hexidecimal code used by web sites by the # symbol.

If you want a second colour, the exact complement often works well. This is the colour 180degs from the first one. Again you can create a palette by keeping that H value constant but varying S and B.

Other secondary colours that can work are at 60 and 120degs from the original (triads) or 150 or 210degs from the original (split complements).

Parliament reviews press standards

A UK parliamentary committee is to investigate press standards and the operation of the libel laws The Guardian reports.

Sienna Miller wins privacy claim

Sienna Miller has been paid £35,000 (plus costs) by The Sun and The News of the World in an out of court privacy settlement.

The papers published stories and photographs earlier this year about Ms Miller's alleged relationship with Balthazar Getty and her breakup with Rhys Ifans.

Lawyers Carter Ruck sued under a range of laws including Breach of Confidence and Harassment.



Breach of Confidence is recently being reinterpreted as a privacy law by the English courts in light of the Human Rights Act. A claimant in a Breach of Confidence action has to demonstrate that the newspaper could reasonably foresee that there was an obligation of confidence. In the past, this has required some kind of contract or relationship. For instance, a company employee has an obligation of confidence to his employer (because of their employment contract). If that employee gives a reporter an internal memo containing confidential information, the journalist would be expected to foresee that there is an obligation of confidence and so that obligation would effectively pass on to them.

When Naomi Campbell was pictured coming out of a drug clinic by The Mirror in February 2001, there was no contract. Yet the courts ruled in her favour, effectively saying that the newspaper could reasonably foresee that she would want to keep that information confidential.

The principle was extended further when F1 Boss Max Mosely sued The News of the World earlier this year for publishing pictures of him with prostitutes. Again it was a Breach of Confidence action, where his lawyers argued that there was an obligation of confidence because the newspaper could reasonably foresee that he would wish to keep the information private.

There is a public interest defence to breach of confidence which the newspapers tried in both the Naomi Campbell and Max Mosely cases. In each case, the defence failed.

Settlement in the latest Sienna Miller case would imply that they newspapers felt they did not have a sufficiently strong public interest argument for publishing.

Online news tips

The structure:
Put the most significant thing (for the reader) first
Put the background last

The intro:
Sum up the main point in a single sentence paragraph of about 20 words
Keep the intro simple (don't use multi-strand intros)
Focus on who, what, why (the where and when can come later)
Start with the who
Make the who individual, personal
Make the who someone the reader will identify with
Make the what visual, dramatic
Never miss out the why
The why should tell the reader why the story is of value to them

The body:
Use quotes and stats for authority
Use quotes or vox pops to include the voice of the reader
Link to related archive material
Link to tables, graphs, maps
Link to blogs and wikis
Link to relevant external sites

Keeping it fresh:
Add bullet intros to longer stories
Use pull-quotes to pick out interest points from within the story
Use relevant, interesting pics
Always caption pics
Use cross-heads (sub-headings)

Most irritating words

Oxford University has compiled a list of the phrases people find most irritating according to the Daily Telegraph, which also comes up with its own list based on reader response.

The research is published in a new book by Jeremy Butterfield called Damp Squid.

Oxford's most irritating are:

1. At the end of the day
2. Fairly unique
3. I personally
4. At this moment in time
5. With all due respect
6. Absolutely
7. It's a nightmare
8. Shouldn't of
9. 24/7
10. It's not rocket science

The evil of the comma

A good piece of writing has few commas.

If you use few commas, it indicates you are writing well.

Among other things, a limited use of commas, to all intents and purposes, suggests the writer knows what they are doing.

Only the first of these sentences is always true. You can tell because it contains no commas. Simply removing commas is not a solution, however. Commas have a useful function in separating parts of a sentence so our reader can understand it. But an overuse of commas suggests that a sentence could be written in a better way.

Solution 1

Change the order: it gets rid of the comma and makes the sentence more elegant.

If you use few commas, it indicates you are writing well.

becomes

(it indicates) You are writing well if you use few commas.

The redunant phrase it indicates somehow becomes more obvious this way round. It can go.


Solution 2

Simplify the sentence. Maybe you need more that one.

Among other things, a limited use of commas, to all intents and purposes, suggests the writer knows what they are doing.

becomes

A limited use of commas suggests the writer knows what they are doing. It is only an indication and there are other things to look out for.


You will produce clearer writing if you can work out how to do without the comma. You will also be more concise.


Thanks to Roy for suggesting the topic after he noticed a New Scientist article containing few commas.