Three Little Pigs advert for the Guardian

Creative Review have just posted this Guardian tv advertisement, their first for 25 years, and I think it's absolutely brilliant. Not only is it interesting to see how the Three Little Pigs could be interpreted in real life but also shows how news isn't just about the news reporter anymore. I wrote an essay last year on the impact Twitter has on the broadcasting and sharing of news and this shows things similarly.

"The spot launches a campaign to promote the paper's 'open journalism' approach – its name for the way in which it is attempting to involve its readership in not just commenting on stories, but contributing to and even determining its news agenda.

The launch ad examines the way in which the tale of the Three Little Pigs might be covered by The Guardian today, with all the different forms of content and different channels that implies. It also seeks to get over the way in which stories develop over time as new facts come to light and the effect of social media on switching the focus of coverage and debate.

An epic two-minute version (shown above) debuted on Channel 4 last night." - CR


EDIT: Probably should have pointed out that BBH created this.

Twitter news

This morning I finished my essay, at least to the point where it has everything in it. Tweaks will have to be made no doubt, but I'm pretty pleased thus far. It's been a really interesting topic to write about and so I have enjoyed researching and writing it.

We were given the choice of five essay titles, each quite wide themselves. I chose the title of New News and the area I chose to cover in my essay... or rather the question I set out to answer was: How has technology and social networks enabled news to spread faster and further? Or something along those lines. My essay title, as it stands at the moment is:

How Twitter, and new technology, has enabled news to spread faster than ever before – and to a wider audience.

Although I briefly cover other social networks, Facebook, YouTube etc, I really wanted to focus on Twitter. And that is what I have done.

This is a paragraph early on in the essay, talking about Twitter:

"Twitter users are invited to share what they are doing, “What's happening?”. However, Twitter is also used to share information whether it be interesting facts, humorous video links or breaking news stories. It is the latter that proves to be a huge internet revolution. When a particular story becomes popular it is known as a 'trending topic', grouped by words that are commonly used in the latest tweets. Similarly, #hashtagging is used by users to specify a particular theme. These features make spreading information even easier, and with the possibility to 're-tweet' those messages that a user finds particularly interesting, news stories can spread, not only, faster than ever before but also to a wider audience,
across the world."

Some great TED talks I reference in my essay:
Evan Williams on Listening to Twitter Users
Clay Shirky: How Social Media can make History

And interesting articles:
How Twitter helped to spread information on the Japan earthquake
Six Degrees of Separation
Game Theory
Social media facts

Hope

Unless you've been hiding under a rock today, you'll know that a devastating earthquake and tsunami has hit Japan. This is terrible and saddens me particularly because I love Japan. But it shouldn't happen anywhere.

This Quoteskine sums it up.

"So, this is my version of that graphic, because when you don’t believe
in praying the best thing to do is hope." - Lee Crutchley, Quoteskine

Egyptian

A news story I am vaguely aware of for once. And a typographic pun.

ie. the font style is Egyptian.

http://friendsoftype.com/2011/02/egyptian-revolution/