There is a lot of debate about ‘old media’ versus new. I prefer to think of conventional media as ‘trusted media’ rather than old media. It doesn’t however help the case for the trusted media when they get their facts so spectacularly wrong that it questions the whole notion of journalistic enquiry. The waters are made even more murky when the story is about new media technology.
A piece appeared on the Telegraph website yesterday that announced that “Debenhams has become the first retailer in Britain to use Twitter, the social networking website.” What were they thinking? Did they entirely miss the Habitat scandal when they used trending topics (like Iraq elections) to try to sell lampshades? It goes on, this ”is a significant change for Twitter as its primary use until now has simply been as a source of gossip and blogging”. What twaddle.
I am a proponent of PR but what comes next is pure puffery “Rather than finding out the latest celebrity tittle-tattle we’re going to use Twitter to provide customers with instant customer service, ” said Debenhams spokesman Ed Watson. “Our Megaday sale on Wednesday (September 9) is one of the busiest times, so using Twitter in this way will be the equivalent of having a dedicated shop assistant with you for the entire time you are in our store”. This is baffling beyond belief and it shows a basic misunderstanding of how twitter works and what proportion of the public are actively using it.
It wouldn’t have been hard for the Telegraph to check its facts as there are quite a few retailers in the UK using twitter many of them very well; Asda, The Conran Shop, Dixons, Littlewoods, Tie Warehouse, Waterstones, need I go on?
In the rush to populate web copy with keywords the most important thing is sometimes forgotten. The copy needs to well written, lively, interesting and relevant. It is astonishing how often this is forgotten in the charge to upload text that will rank highly in Google. 
Whether or not the current outbreak of swine flu translates into a world pandemic, we are already seeing information and and data spreading around the web at a staggering pace. 
It is time for the British media to end their unholy alliance with the publicist Max Clifford. Max plies his trade by doing deals and peddling untruths, he says so himself and I have witnessed it at first hand. 
Alan Rusbridger the Editor of the Guardian has started to twitter. Along the the Telegraph’s William Lewis he is blazing the trail for major newspaper editors in using the microblogging social network*. It should be of little surprise that he is leading the way. Many of his colleagues at the paper are avid users and the Guardian itself is redefining media concepts. The Guardian is no longer just a newspaper. It is a trusted media brand that delivers audio, video, web content as well as a daily, dead wood and ink edition.
