You know its bad when people like Sam Leith loose their jobs
Sam Leith is an acquaintance of mine. He is also a terribly good writer. This evening I got a message in my HelloTxt (a status feed agregator I work on) feed, it said:
Sam Leith is fired, pending appeal.
On Facebook I was greeted by a stream of disbelief from other fiends. One pointed us to to an official confirmation.
On this blog I have written a lot about the shake up of traditional media by new media like Facebook. Now new media (social media) is beating old media with the most authentic news of old media’s own demise.
Sam is a gifted journalist and was the Telegraph’s literary editor. He once wrote about Facebook and its News feed:
“Then there’s the “News Feed”. Facebook is the Reuters of irrelevance, the AFP of inanity. Look at it now. The “top news line”, as we call it in the trade, is that at 10:51, Larushka Ivan-Zadeh became “undecided”. Just three minutes before that, Toby Young added Rio Bravo to his list of favourite movies. Mo Kanneh, I discover, became “chill” at 11:59pm, 3:01am, and 5:04am. Presumably he now resembles a fish-finger after a big night out in Aberdeen. Update! 11:11am: Ben Price removed Dirty Harry from his list of favourite movies.”
Just earlier this week Facebook’s newsfeed was deadly serious.
If you read the English press you might be aware that there’s some bad things going down in South Africa (yes again).
An old school friend updated his feed just this week. It read:
“A J…is sad. His best friend was shot dead in a robbery last night :(.”
The Financial Times recently reported a surge in sales. In times of crisis people turn to quality reads. Social Media is no different.
Update: Sam on being made redundant.
3 comments
Wessel — you’re a gent for posting these kind words in a time of slightly-bummed-out-ness. But, hell’s fkg teeth, whether or not I have a job writing celebrity comment bilge for the DT isn’t exactly stacking up against what you might call proper news from SA. Perhaps, anyway, I can buy you a real-world drink when next you’re in London…
New email as submitted.
xx
Sam
Ha! Well I am in Londen. Will email forthwith.
Sam’s broadside at Facebook’s “top news line” suggests he hadn’t come to terms with the difference between mass and social media. The news feed he quoted was customised to someone or other; to that user, it is indeed worthwhile news (one can filter one’s feed to exclude undesired news).
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