Category Archive: 200 Words

Gerard Cunningham writes 200 Words at a time. Sometimes serious, sometimes whimsical, whatever is going on around the place.

Apr 15

The Social Media survey

I’m conducting a quick survey in advance of a presentation I’ve been talking into giving to Dublin Freelance NUJ members tomorrow on using social media. Naturally, no presentation on social media is complete without reference to crowdsourcing, so this post is an attempt at garnering the Wisdom Of Te Crowd. What advice would you give …

Continue reading »

Mar 04

Disruption

Last night, I asked a politician a question. And because I was on twitter, as was the politician, I asked it on twitter. The politician answered me, but was also annoyed that I’d jumped to conclusions by posting to twitter. I argued I was just asking a question, not making a statement, but 24 hours …

Continue reading »

Mar 02

Media futures

I was asked to speak last night at “Crisis in Journalism”, an NUJ event for students. My brief was to give a perspective on life as a freelance journalist. RTÉ’s Colm O’Mongain spoke about broadcasting, Noirin Hegarty spoke about print and online, and Barry McCall gave an overview of the industry in Ireland. Usually I’m …

Continue reading »

Feb 20

Reality Check

I want facts. And that means that often, some of my most productive reading is on blogs. Bloggers (unpaid, writing in their spare time, dismissed as hobbyists by “proper” journalists) produce the goods often enough to keep me coming back. Whether its Tony Humphreys‘ views on autism, a questionable advertising claim, or alleged social welfare …

Continue reading »

Feb 14

All’s fair in love and PR

Yesterday, I asked the twitter machine for examples of Valentine’s Day themed press releases, just to see what the public relations industry was up to. The results are laid out below. A postal campaign by SPARK, sending letters containing matchsticks to welfare minister Joan Burton, who “ignited the spark” in single parents across Ireland. They …

Continue reading »

Feb 13

Email filter

A week back, I wondered about the contradiction between two items I came across online. On the one hand, Kerry TD Brendan Griffin was reported as saying he had handed back half his salary, and would continue to do so. It took just five minutes to do so, he told the Irish Times. On the …

Continue reading »

Feb 08

Conventional wisdom: What everybody knows

Tuesday, John Murray held a phone-in to find a listener with the lowest bass singing voice in Ireland. As a throwaway remark, voice coach Paul Moussoulides said research showed listeners of both sexes preferred male voices on the radio. What research? WomenOnAir founder Margaret E Ward spent some time looking for this frequently cited research. …

Continue reading »

Feb 04

No comment

For a while, I’ve been toying with an column idea. Call it The Raised Eyebrow. Part Flat Earth News, part questioning conventional wisdom. Last week, an editor agreed to a column. Depending on how it worked out, more might follow. One idea came from a throwaway Prime Time line. “Sean Sherlock’s website was hacked”, apparently …

Continue reading »

Jan 29

Ripped from the headlines

BBC News carries a story about a ‘Jack the Ripper manuscript‘, discovered in a museum two years ago and about to be published in book form. But the ‘confession’ as described in the article sets off several alarm bells, not least that the purported author, James Carnac, seems never to have existed. Two sections of …

Continue reading »

Jan 29

A torrent of words

I write. As a freelance, I hold copyright on those words. “Ireland’s SOPA” wants to protect those words. But copyright already protects them. My words have been pirated a few times. The first time, articles were cut and pasted wholesale from a website and re-used. Not by a pirate website, but by an old-established company. …

Continue reading »

Older posts «