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Ian Burrell: The internet Antichrist who is converting online evangelists

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Andrew Keen, the British-born and self-styled "Antichrist of Silicon Valley", has a problem. The internet evangelists who once heckled and abused him for his heretical questioning of the accepted wisdom of the digital future are now starting to agree with him. Keen is a strange concoction. Based in Santa Rosa, California, amid the cream of the world's technological innovators he has long been a lone voice, warning of the potentially corrosive effects of the internet.

Ian Burrell: Astonishing informality between Hunt and Michel

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Jeremy Hunt made his business fortune by founding a publishing venture, Hotcourses, offering specialist further education to help students new and old to enhance or change their careers.

Ian Burrell: What's next for Fleet Street? The brave new world of 'newsbrands'

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Today is a momentous day for the British national press. It is the official end of the "newspaper" industry and the beginning of a whole new economic sector: the "newsbrands" business.

Ian Burrell: Adam Buxton – the quirky radio star breaking into the mainstream

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:00:01 +0100

Is the mainstream finally ready for Adam Buxton? Tonight he's nominated for two Sony awards with his long-time radio partner Joe Cornish and his touring show Bug has finally been given its own television slot by Sky.

Ian Burrell: How London turned into the global centre of music technology

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It was a packed nightclub in London's King's Cross, and eight internet companies faced each other off in a competition that embodied the new confidence in Britain's digital sector. The geeks were behind their laptops, as you'd expect, but they were playing music – and seeking a tumultuous reaction from the crowd.

Ian Burrell: Insights into the US as PBS offers up its documentary credentials

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Paula Kerger knew she had a hit with Downton Abbey in America after the viral success of "Downton Arby's" – an online spoof which set the period drama in a fast food restaurant selling soda and curly fries. Further parodies have included the rap-based "The Fresh Prince of Downton Abbey" and a tribute from NBC chat show host Jimmy Fallon, who made an eight-minute short called "Downton Sixbey" (named after his famous Studio 6B in New York). Kerger, who is president of PBS, the nearest American equivalent to the BBC, chose to buy Downton before it had even debuted on ITV but admits to having been taken "by surprise" by the scale of its American appeal. "People have created personalities on Twitter – my favourite is 'Lady Mary's Eyebrows'," she says.

Ian Burrell: Victoria's secret: how Radio 5 has got Westminster running scared

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Maybe it's the Ken Clarke factor? Government ministers have become strangely frightened of appearing on Victoria Derbyshire's show for Radio 5 Live, from which the Justice Secretary scurried out in his hush puppies after a dreadful mauling last year.

Ian Burrell: The woman with £1 billion to spend – and a hotline to British mothers

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Karen Blackett is star-spotting over afternoon tea in London's Wolseley restaurant. She picks out Dennis Wise, the diminutive former England midfielder and David Dein, one-time Arsenal vice-chairman. But maybe the stars should be spotting Blackett, who has £1bn a year to spend.

Ian Burrell: The rapper turned entrepreneur who has the eyes and ears of the young

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The future shape of media in Britain is a rangy black kid in Puma Hi Tops and a Ducati motorcycle jacket. Don't take my word for that, speak to Richard Branson – or to Chad Hurley, founder of YouTube.

Ian Burrell: Twitter is open for business, and that means ads coming to a tweet near you

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Except for the nameplate on the meeting room door that reads "@barnowl", there is little to indicate that Bruce Daisley is sitting in one of the hubs of a global media enterprise that is expected to generate revenues north of £160m this year. The fourth-floor London headquarters of Twitter, in the media district sometimes called Fitzrovia, is less prestigious than that of other Internet giants such as Microsoft and Google, with their breakfast bars and games rooms. Yes, there are the fruit bowls and supplies of mineral water – pre-requisites of any new media workplace – but Daisley acknowledges that "we are a pretty small team here".

Brian Cathcart: The glaring blind spot in Leveson's inquiry that must not be ignored

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The Leveson inquiry, so often referred to (though generally by journalists) as "flawed", or even "deeply flawed", is doing a fine job and generally a fair one. Anyone who tunes in or attends will know the hearings are peppered with interventions by the judge in which he declares his determination to protect free speech, prevent score-settling and acknowledge the necessary untidiness and truculence of good journalism.

Stephen Glover: Even the right-wing press could not support Osborne on this Budget

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The past few days have been bad for the Coalition but far worse for David Cameron's Tories. It was they, rather than the Liberal Democrats, who bore the brunt of the media blame for the Budget, and it was they who were turned over by yesterday's Sunday Times over talk of dodgy donations.

Ian Burrell: How campaigning NGOs have joined the foreign-reporting business

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

On the borders of Syria they are there, just as they were in the ruins of Misrata in Libya and among the crowds in Cairo's Tahrir Square last year. Alongside hard-nosed war correspondents are a new breed of researchers from campaigning organisations, just as determined to get the scoop.

Ian Burrell: Badoo... the dating site that 140 million people have fallen in love with

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Badoo is one of Britain's biggest online success stories and has amassed 140 million users a month – yet many people here have never heard of it. The site promises the excitement and potential for romance of a nightclub – but one you can access from your phone or laptop without the need to dress up. Run from offices in the heart of London's Soho, Badoo is essentially a dating site that also allows users to pretend they're only looking to make new friends. And the formula seems to be working.

Stephen Glover: Thatcher, Murdoch and the meeting that was erased from history

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Did the Thatcher government bend the rules to allow Rupert Murdoch to buy The Times and Sunday Times in January 1981, thereby cementing his dominant position in the British Press? Many have alleged as much without producing conclusive evidence. A note just released as part of the Thatcher papers suggests Mr Murdoch was given an inside track.

Ian Burrell: Comedy will be key if BBC3 wants to keep its youthful audience happy

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Did you ever wonder what became of Heydon Prowse? He was the prankster who filmed the Conservative frontbencher Alan Duncan on the House of Commons terrace claiming at the time of the Westminster expenses scandal that MPs "have to live on rations and are treated like shit".

Stephen Glover: The Troubles are still raging for The Guardian's media pundit

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

An extraordinary item appeared last Tuesday on Professor Roy Greenslade's MediaGuardian blog. It was a harsh attack on his colleague Henry McDonald, the long-serving Ireland correspondent of The Observer and The Guardian. The Prof noted that the previous Friday a story by Mr McDonald had appeared in The Guardian wrongly attributing a Belfast murder the night before to "Republican paramilitaries".

Ian Burrell: Still in Vogue... publisher explains why magazine is bucking the online trend

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Quinn's Book is a slim volume that the veteran publisher of Vogue takes with him to meetings with the media agencies which make the key decisions on where to spend the advertising budgets of big brands. It contains some information that runs contrary to accepted thinking on public tastes because it shows that the affluent and style-obsessed readers of the self-proclaimed "Bible of Fashion" still prefer print to digital.

Stephen Glover: Is Geordie Greig being road-tested for the editorship of the Daily Mail?

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

For me the most interesting development of the week was not the resignation of James Murdoch as chairman of News International. His fall from grace will be prolonged and messy, and there will be many opportunities to write about it. No, more gripping was the unexpected appointment of Geordie Greig as editor of The Mail on Sunday in place of the long-serving and redoubtable Peter Wright.

Stephen Glover: A new dawn for Rupert Murdoch. But did The Sun shine on Sunday?

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Rupert Murdoch's new paper is not even called The Sun on Sunday. It is the Sunday edition of The Sun. That tells us all we need to know. This title is not simply a refashioned News of the World rising from the ashes.

Ian Burrell: The expansion of Sky Arts confirms that it isn't just a cultural fig leaf

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Ronnie Wood is as handy with a brush as he is with a plectrum and his paintings can sell for £1m. But do his abilities as a guitarist alone qualify him to be regarded as a figurehead of the arts? In an era where anyone with a public profile is quickly deemed to be a "celebrity", broadcasters must tread carefully to avoid being criticised for ditching high culture in favour of ratings-friendly shows about the rich and famous. And that's especially true of a broadcaster that is trying to win a reputation as the new champion of the arts.

Stephen Glover: The interests of Mr Murdoch and his journalists no longer coincide

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The past few days have seen a dramatic and unexpected realignment of forces in the phone-hacking scandal. Until a week ago it seemed that the Murdoch Press, in particular the News of the World and The Sun, was excoriated by almost everyone: polite society, the liberal intelligentsia, the police, hacking victims, newspaper rivals and politicians. Tabloid journalists working for Rupert Murdoch were all tarred with the same brush.

Ian Burrell: NI's standards committee once looked like a fig leaf. Now some say it's the enemy within

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

There has always been a bunker mentality at News International, which makes it all the harder to deal with a perceived enemy within. So the resentment directed at some second-floor offices at the Thomas More complex where Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers are based, is considerable. "There's a sense of betrayal," said one source from The Sun.

Ian Burrell: There aren't enough female comics on TV – and the BBC knows it's not funny

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

This is a critical year for BBC comedy, when it will finally seek to address previous failings in giving a television platform to the funniest women in Britain. The track record is poor. It's now 35 years since Victoria Wood made her breakthrough on That's Life. Since then we've had Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders as the women of the Eighties alternative comedy movement, Caroline Aherne emerging in the guise of Mrs Merton in the Nineties and, for some years now, Jo Brand as a lone funny-woman on panel shows.

Stephen Glover: These arrests reveal that Murdoch is no longer running the show

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Nothing like this has happened to a newspaper before. Two weeks ago the executive editor of The Sun, Fergus Shanahan, was arrested with four other former or current journalists on the paper. That was bad enough, but the arrest on Saturday of five senior employees, including joint deputy editor Geoff Webster and chief reporter John Kay, has turned a crisis into something close to a calamity.

Ian Burrell: Never has the Mail been given such a pasting

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Never, in all the years of Paul Dacre's editorship, has the journalism of the Daily Mail come under such sustained public attack. Again and again the editor-in-chief sighed in exasperation as Robert Jay QC, counsel to the Leveson Inquiry, questioned the working methods of the paper Mr Dacre has overseen for two decades.

Ian Burrell: Time to build a legacy now the big boys have arrived at Silicon Roundabout

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Google will this week announce plans for its seven-storey "campus" near east London's Silicon Roundabout. Twitter arrived in the area last year through its acquisition of the UK business TweetDeck and now Foursquare, the location-based social-networking site from New York, is moving into the neighbourhood.

Stephen Glover: The editor of The Times must learn the lessons of the News of the World

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Tomorrow the editor of The Times, James Harding, is due to appear before the Leveson Inquiry a second time. I suspect he will be pretty nervous. When he appeared before the inquiry three weeks ago he appears to have been somewhat economical with the truth concerning a case of email hacking at his paper. The Times also stands accused of withholding important information from a High Court judge in 2009.