[media] Daily Mail Finally Embraces the Internet:‘…over half of all the Mail’s readers had an internet connection, making the launch a viable prospect commercially and editorially. “The question has always been not if but when we would launch. We believe that not only is the market ready but we’re ready in terms of how we build websites and make them profitable. More importantly, I believe the readers are ready,” said Mr Hart, the former Sunday Business managing director and Ask Jeeves chief executive who completed a five-year plan for the business before taking on the new job. The new website will have a strong community element, allowing Mail readers to vent their spleen on a range of message boards and interactive features.’

[blogs] MediaGuardian 100: #94. A Blogger …‘Do bloggers add clarity to a situation, or do they serve only to only confuse it further? And – a subject closer to some hacks’ hearts – why the hell are these people writing for free, anyway?’

[newspapers] Hate Mail — profile of Paul Dacre editor of the Daily Mail …‘One associate says that Dacre reminds more and more of Basil Fawlty — “intemperate and slightly mad” — every time he sees him. “The ideal Dacre story is one that leaves the reader hating somebody or something,” says one former Mail reporter, and what the paper really hates are the liberalism and multiculturalism at the heart of Britain’s changing society. The Mail has worked itself into a lather over asylum-seekers, but accuse it of racism and you come up against Dacre’s brilliantly orchestrated campaign to bring the killers of Stephen Lawrence to justice.’

[lizards] David Icke’s Media …‘I do read the Daily Mail, because its politics stink. In fact, so much so that I have to read it at arm’s length with a peg on my nose.’

[bb3] It’s Imperative that I spot any Nudity — behind the scenes at the Press Agency covering Big Brother 3 …‘Rob Kelly, 21, works for a press agency, Kent News and Pictures. For the last eight weeks, he’s watched Big Brother for 12 hours a day. His eyes must not leave the screen. If he needs the loo, someone stands in. Every three to four minutes, he fills in a log of the housemates’ activity. When his shift finishes at 9am, another “monitor” immediately takes over for the next 12 hours until Kelly resumes his watch at 9pm.’

[comment] For the Hell of It — Julie Burchill on the Daily Mail.

The Mail compared to comics:‘The secret with the Daily Mail, as with the Sun, is to read it not as a newspaper but as a comic in which someone has forgotten to do the drawings. But whereas the Sun would be Viz, the Daily Mail is a dark, nihilistic number, like Hate or Hell-Blazer.’

More:‘What is the Daily Hell scared of? How long have you got? On one day last week, you could have chosen from the abortion pill, gay rights police, dogs, white people having black babies, taxes, single mothers, career women, exams, teachers, doctors, taxi drivers, unions, drugs, compensation, Big Brother, HRT, sugar, vitamin pills, foreign beer and girls who go on holiday to Greece and drink too much (though in Daily Hellville half a shandy is probably “too much” for a woman).’

[tv] Turner’s Lost Love, CNN, Has A Doomsday Plan in the Can — great story on Ted Turner and CNN’s “end-of-the-world video”…‘Turner, it seems, has been a doom-and-gloom kind of guy from the very day in June 1980 when he launched the cable network. He said then, as only he could, “We gonna go on air June 1, and we gonna stay on until the end of the world. When that time comes, we’ll cover it, play ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ and sign off.” Ten years later, I’m told, Turner used CNN production facilities to create what he called his “end-of-the-world” video. Sources tell me it consists of a recording of “Nearer, My God,” over footage of a waving American flag. Turner is said to have ordered the tape locked away until it was determined that the world was about to end. “It was like a sign-off tape that you often see in the middle of the night,” says one source. “But to Ted, it was a sign-off forever.”‘ [via Follow Me Here]

[media] The Man Who Killed the Media … Media Guardian profile/interview with Michael Wolff.‘…Wolff’s view is that the world’s media barons are less powerful than they were in the days of Henry Luce or when Americans could watch only three television channels. He calls the combination of America Online and Time Warner “a bit of ridiculousness”, indicative of the media industry’s desperation to find new ways of making money. He is dismissive of the industry’s current vogue to own distribution networks such as cable and television channels, for example. “They’re trying to turn themselves into utilities. They go from one grail or shibboleth to another. They are hustlers and charlatans all,” he says with some relish.’

[media] Neurosis in Print — Polly Toynbee wonders if the Daily Mail is a spent political force…‘Why has the Mail lost its influence, despite its sales? Because its editor, Paul Dacre, imposes his own neurotic vision of society upon his paper. It is neither coherent nor consistent but a Toytown world of nice white folk inside gated communities, fearful of everything outside (especially the gypsies in the woods), pining for a golden era that never was. It is John Major’s fantasy world of spinsters bicycling to church, Tory squires downing warm beer in the saloon, plebs in the public bar, all deference and homogeneity, caste and class in their place. Above all the holy Oxo family is the Mail’s guiding star – pure, uncomplicated, eternal.’ [via Venusberg]

[news] The Guardian profiles the Daily Mail…‘Dacre was watching the one o’clock news with his narrow eyes: on it were the bereaved couple, with messier hair than before, wearing tracksuits and trainers, smoking: not the Mail’s sort of people at all. The editor, who is 52, spotlessly shirtsleeved, brisk in his diction, with hair like a cerebral Tory minister, was heard to growl. Then he spoke: “These people couldn’t bring up a fucking hamster!” Real life tends to disappoint the Daily Mail.’ [Related Links: Daily Mail Website]

[news] No News is Good News… interesting interview. ‘There are examples on almost every single news programme you ever hear or see on TV or radio. What truly interests these programmes is death and suffering, and the wider the scale of it, the more they’re interested. They ignore ninety per cent of the world unless something spectacularly violent or unpleasant happens there, like a ferry disaster or disco burning down, or something like that. But those are really just hors d’oeuvres. What they really like is something they can wring a lot of juice out of, which means something that happens closer to home. The Dunblane Massacre was the ultimate news-journalist’s wank-fantasy. It had everything — violent death, suffering of the innocent, enormous amounts of emotional pain. Everything they love to linger over and rub our noses in while they wank themselves to orgasm after orgasm of fake sympathy and self-righteousness.’