All posts by Kevin

Media

A sign of the times

What is going on at the Financial Times? Recent stories in the weekend edition have been headlined:

  • “Big knickers are back but this time they’re sexy”
  • “Super grannies: Juggling work and grandchildren”
  • “Don’t get left high and dry: Frequent flying can be a disaster for your skin”.

It’s as if the FT has just decided that the weaker sex isn’t so weak after all.

The real answer of course is a new strategy designed to broaden the pink business newspaper’s traditionally narrow appeal. It seems that 2002 was a bad year for the FT, largely due to the decline in advertising in the UK, but also because the many redundancies and layoffs in the finance industry have resulted in fewer people reading the paper.

The paper’s response to this decline has included a half-hearted new design, some new content (more sports and fashion), a new weekend magazine, and a new direct marketing campaign (see A warmer shade of pink and FT seeks broader appeal).

The latest news about this change suggests that it has had an initial positive effect. Apparently, the readership increased by 5% in the first week after the new “look” was launched (see FT relaunch boosts sales figures ).

However I’d be surprised if these changes really do increase the market for the FT in the long term. For one thing the direct marketing campaign seems like an unmitigated disaster. As Roy Greenslade writing in the Guardian earlier this month pointed out, the campaign has targeted the FT’s current customers:

Pearson, the FT’s owner, may see this revamp as the paper’s last hurrah under its umbrella, and it certainly isn’t skimping on its outlay, having spent some £3m, including £1m on a hit-and-miss direct mail shot to win over new readers. This has resulted in me being the proud recipient of vouchers which are saving me £12 over the next month. I am now able to receive a £1 FT for half the price every day until May 23. As a regular reader, of course, that promotion is irrelevant to me, so Pearson is sacrificing sales income it can ill afford.

I too have received these vouchers, but I received two sets because the FT still thinks I live at my previous address as well as my new one (I moved five months ago). These two offers are staggered so I can now receive the FT at a discount until August 22nd. Nor does the fact that I already subscribe to FT.com seem to have registered with the FT’s marketing department. They seem to believe that I will not only want to read the paper both on-line and in print, but that I am prepared to pay twice for the privilege.

I predict that the FT will go back to the drawing board after the summer.

Personal

A voice from the past

One of the personal projects that distracted me last month was the transcription of my great, great, great grandfather’s diary for the years 1825-1827. The Reverend William Fidler was a Methodist missionary, and started a journal in which to record his experiences during his first mission to the West Indies. It’s a fascinating description of a perilous journey and the following two years on the Island of St Vincent in the Caribbean.

I discovered the existance of this diary only last autumn, and it’s taken me since then to copy, transcribe and publish it on the web. I’m writing about it here mainly so that Google will discover the text and index it accordingly. However should anyone be interested in reading it, you can find it at http://www.kevinlaurence.net/genealogy/fidlerdiary/index.html.

I find it very weird to think that had he not taken this journey, I wouldn’t exist; but of that there can be absolutely no doubt. It’s further evidence that we can never foresee all the consequences of our actions.

Canada

Springtime distractions

When people ask me why I live in Britain, I tell them it’s for the wonderful weather. Of course they usually react with disbelief, but here’s news of the climate in which I grew up (via Radio Canada International):

CALGARY: ALBERTANS DIG OUT AFTER RECORD SNOWFALL
People in southern Alberta Sunday [27 April 2003] continued to mop up heavy, wet snow after a record-breaking spring blizzard. As much as 30 to 60 centimetres of snow in some areas Saturday left people battling slick roads, power failures, cancelled flights and back-breaking shovelling. Calgary and the surrounding area got blasted with snow throughout the entire day Saturday. The snowfall amount was a record for the date since Environment Canada began recording weather 118 years ago. The storm stranded hundreds of travellers, closed highways, toppled trees and knocked out power to thousands of homes. Two Calgary men, aged 58 and 62, died from heart attacks while shovelling. In all, paramedics responded to six patients suffering such attacks while digging out from under the blizzard. Snow fell as far north as Grande Prairie and heavy snowfall warnings were in effect Sunday night for most of central and north-western Alberta, including the Edmonton area. Forecasters were calling for 10 to 15 centimetres.

It’s on record as having snowed in Calgary in every month of the year. I have even experienced snow in August in the Rocky Mountains to the west of the city. I’ll take Britain’s milder climate over western Canada’s extremes any day.

As it happens, we’ve had fantastic weather in the UK this spring. The gardening correspondent of the Financial Times recently described it as “divine” and the myriad of statistics produced by the Met Office confirms the perception that it’s been a beautifully distracting spring.

That’s partly why I haven’t written much in this virtual space in April. It’s been beautiful, and I’ve been busy tackling real world pursuits.

Humour

New words of war

Now that the war with Iraq is well under way, a number of news organisations have published guides to the new military jargon that has inevitably arrived. The BBC has E-cyclopedia’s words of war and the Guardian has The language of war.

However, I can’t help publishing my own list of neologisms with their real meanings as follows:

  • Coalition of the willing: a euphemism for sex between consenting adults.
  • Decapitation strike: occurs in baseball when a player fails to hit the ball, but hits the pitcher instead.
  • Shock ‘n Awe: a Grammy Award-winning female Rhythm & Blues singer from the US.

If I find any more, I’ll let you know.

Management

Why do you work?

Stephen Overall has written an interesting article in the Financial Times on the motivation of workers, titled On the scent of the light reward (subscription required), in which he gets straight to the point:

Why does the worker work? Friedrich Engels asked the question in 1844. “For love of work? From a natural impulse? Not at all! He works for money, for a thing which has nothing to do with the work itself.”

Few have ever thought otherwise. In the Affluent Worker studies of the 1960s, sociologists investigated car workers in Luton and confirmed that work was a means to an end, a temporary surrender of liberty for the sake of material reward. This remains true today.

According to the article more recent research suggests that the keys to motivation lie in five different “dimensions”. Apparently, motivation flows from:

  • building an “internal brand” with which employees can identify.
  • communicating the organisation’s values.
  • demonstrating better leadership.
  • offering a challenging and interesting work environment
  • good performance management and continuous improvement.

According to one academic working on this topic, any serious attempt to investigate the nature of motivation “…needs to begin from an examination of policies and practices that operate in an organisation. Unfairness is the greatest demotivator.”

That’s all interesting food for thought; particularly the comment about unfairness. Who decides what’s fair and what’s not? Since we’re talking about the employee’s motivation, it would seem to me that the employee’s perception of fairness is of paramount importance. However, I wonder how often employees and management would share the same definition? Not often, I’d bet.

Media

Saddam the Crusher

Sometime ago I wondered why the media often refer to Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein as simply “Saddam”. Wouldn’t this abbreviation be equivalent to referring to his main opponent as “George”? And if so, why does the media discriminate in this way?

Well I struggled for a while to find the answer, but it turns out that Saddam Hussein’s full name is “Saddam Hussein al-Majd al-Tikriti”. Most Arab names have a genealogical structure; individuals are called after their father and paternal grandfather and may also reveal the geographical region from which they come. So we can to some extent dissect the President of Iraq’s name as follows:

  • “Saddam” is the epithet that he chose upon becoming ruler of Iraq and is derived from the Persian word meaning “crush”.
  • “Hussein” was his father’s first name
  • “al-Majd” refers to his paternal grandfather.
  • “al-Tikriti” refers to the town closest to his place of birth, Tikrit.

So, a rough English translation of his name would be “The Crusher/son of Hussein/son of Majd/from Tikrit”. In addition, his true first name was apparently “Hussein”, but that was dropped when he assumed the name “Saddam”.

You can probably see why journalists may have been uncertain about what to call him. While the BBC uses “Saddam”, Canada’s Globe And Mail calls him “Mr. Hussein” (see MP wants Hussein to face trial). For more details see the CTV article You say Saddam, I say Hussein – what’s in a name? and from Slate in 1998 What’s the Name of Saddam Hussein?

Media

Mark’s Mailbox

One of the most consistently good reads on the web is Mark’s Mailbox, the letters page on the web site of right-wing columnist Mark Steyn. Steyn is a Canadian, but he currently lives in New Hampshire, having spent several years working in London. His work regularly appears in the National Post in Canada, The Daily Telegraph in Britain and the Chicago Sun-Times in the U.S., among other publications. As his web site (SteynOnline) pretentiously proclaims, Steyn is a "one-man global content provider". (If you see a link between Steyn and publications once owned by Hollinger International Inc., you’d be correct; The Lord Black of Crossharbour is apparently a big fan of Steyn’s work.)

I don’t read his columns very often. Although his writing is frequently very good, Steyn’s views are too extremist for me, and rarely substantiated by any serious objective analysis. Mark’s Mailbox, on the other hand, is a weekly must-read. Here’s a sample just from this week’s letters page:

You are such a hateful person! There is nothing good that appears in your negative, inflammatory columns! I have begged the Chicago Sun-Times to stop running your pieces. You want to bring on the war? Only a crazy person would talk that way. Perhaps you can share a room with BC Premier Gordon Campbell when he goes in for substance abuse rehab as it is clear that only someone drunk or on drugs would write the things you do.
May you be surrounded by neighbours who all vote for the NDP!

David L. Blatt
Chicago

There really isn’t much chance that Steyn’s columns can compete with fan mail as entertaining as that! I highly recommend his web site, but stick to the letters page for a really good read.

Humour

We’re all getting a little stressed

I don’t really like simply recycling the news, but yesterday I was tempted and now I can’t resist.

Yesterday’s bizarre, but all too credible, story was about a bus driver who was assigned to a new route. Not knowing the way, he asked two fourteen year-old passengers to direct him using the London A to Z. Unfortunately, none of them paid attention to the height restrictions on their improvised route, and consequently they ripped off the top of the bus by driving under a bridge that was a foot and a half too low! For more, see the BBC News at Lost bus driver’s bridge crash.

Now today, comes the news that “A fish heading for slaughter in a New York market shouted warnings about the end of the world before it was killed”. This story (Talking fish stuns New York) is rather incredible to say the least, and so hilarious that I had to share the best bit:

Mr Nivelo [one of the fishmongers] told the paper he was so shocked he fell into a stack of slimy packing crates, before running in panic to the shop entrance and grabbing Mr Rosen, shouting: “The fish is talking!”

However his co-worker reacted with disbelief. “I screamed ‘It’s the devil The devil is here!’, but Zalman said to me ‘You crazy, you a meshugeneh [mad man]!” Mr Nivelo said.

A disbelieving Mr Rosen then rushed to the back of the store, only to hear the fish identifying itself as the soul of a local Hasidic man who had died the previous year. It instructed him to pray and study the Torah, but Mr Rosen admitted that in a state of panic he attempted to kill the fish, injuring himself in the process and ending up in hospital.

I think we’re all just a little too stressed at the moment.

Humour

A red letter day

Here’s an hilarious story from BBC News – British Gas sends out £2.3 trillion bill:

Utility British Gas has admitted sending one of its customers a bill for £2,320,333,681,613. Brian Law of Fartown, Huddersfield, received the bill last month as a final demand after failing to pay an earlier bill of £59. The sum of £2.3 trillion was apparently due for electricity supplied to Mr Law’s new home in Fartown. And the letter from British Gas threatened to take him to court unless he paid the amount in full.

Can you imagine the look on his face? It’s very funny as long as it someone else’s tragedy. I laughed out loud.