Media Diet Week 40

Press: I seem to have ever less time to read the press and I'm not sure why that is. I'm not going out more at present than I was a few months ago, nor am I spending more time on the computer. If anything, I'm spending less, the PC slack being taken up by a slight increase in my TV viewing. So I was rather surprised today to find myself clearing out a barely read copy of BBC Good Food, pausing only to rip out 3 recipes. New purchases this week included Great British Food, bought for research with a view to pitching (a previous copy acquired for the same reason got lost in the house move) but I'd like to find the time to read it for pleasure too, and Bizarre, as it has a story in it on a campaign I'm involved with. I don't usually read Bizarre as it's just not quite my thing even though it ought to be, so this is a rare purchase for me.

Blogs: Technorati seems to have finally started resolving its problems. My blogs are being pinged again and I'd like to think it's cos I had a moan last week. On the downside, my RSS reader Bloglines is now playing up and being very slow at picking up feeds. I have a back-up in Google Reader but I prefer Bloglines for a number of reasons so I hope this is a temporary blip. I have become obsessed with a new blog called The Bureau, largely because the author clearly belongs to my professional body but their identity is maddeningly elusive. I am clearly more pedantic than Bureauista, though I draw the line at grammar nazism.

TV: I've noticed that my TV consumption has increased slightly. Ok, it's doubled. Probably. But all that means is that I'm probably averaging 90 minutes a day rather than 45 (an episode of EastEnders plus the news headlines, maybe). Naturally, I'm watching Strictly Come Dancing again this year, but I'm irritated by the length of the results show. An hour is over-egging it and I find myself tuning in just for the last 20 minutes. There are also far too many couples this year and I fear the BBC is stretching its brand to the limit. There's cashing in on a hit show and there's alienating loyal viewers. We really do not need Claudia Winkleman on 5 nights a week for 16 weeks. My new secret vice, though, is Katie and Peter: The Next Chapter. I hate reality TV yet I find this weirdly addictive, not least because Jordan has had so much "work" done on her face that her upper lip is becoming a star in its own right. Lesley Ash must be weeping at the loss of her trout pout title.

Books: deeply engrossed in The Arsenic Labyrinth right now. As crime novels go, so far it's shaping up very nicely. And as crime novelists go, Martin Edwards just gets better and better. The Blair Years is still on hold...

Media Diet Week 39

Press: I'm quite amazed at the number of physical papers I've purchased this week. Four copies of the Guardian and an Observer, a Sun and a News of the World plus my local paper (for the first time in weeks) and 2 Daily Mirrors. This was largely down to the amount of travelling I've done since 8 days ago. Reading newspapers on trains is practically obligatory and certainly passes the time. One thing I've noticed is I have actually read more. I suppose it's partly because I've paid for the papers and want to get my money's worth but I'm also very aware that when reading the papers online I tend to just skim the headlines and only click on those that entice me. With a print copy, my eye is drawn not just to the headlines but also the opening paragraphs and that determines whether I'll keep reading or not. On the net, papers tend to offer only the headline of a story - the sole determinant of a click-through. Perhaps there is a lesson there for the designers of the online editions...

Blogs: two journalists I admire have started blogs - stand up Kate Bevan and Anne Wollenberg. My current gripe, though, is with Technorati, which seems to be permanently borked. Technorati's admin have admitted to having indexing problems and a backlog to catch up on but weeks later nothing seems to be fixed. Their last site status report, dated 12 September, claims all problems are resolved when they clearly are not - a look at the discussion board reveals endless complaints from fed-up bloggers who are not being automatically pinged. This particular blog went unpinged for a whole month. It took four requests to admin to get them to push a status update through for me (which saw lots of new incoming links and a hefty rise in my ranking) but since then it has languished unpinged again, 12 days and counting. I'm not alone in feeling frustrated by Technorati, which seems to be rapidly losing its reputation among bloggers as the essential indexing site. I'm looking into alternatives myself now that I can longer rely on Technorati for reliability.

TV/radio: apart from EastEnders and Strictly Come Dancing, I'm still watching very little TV. EastEnders is attracting huge controversy just now for running a long-term storyline about paedophilia. It has been really well-scripted so far, with some terrific acting and I think if it helps even one abused child break their silence it will have done good. Looking back over the last few weeks, I seem to have started watching a number of things and abandoned them - Merlin and Mutual Friends to mention just 2. Very few of the new serials seem compelling enough to make me want to tune in again. Usually the autumn season signals a decent run of programmes but I suspect at this rate I may be signing up for adult ed classes to fill my evenings.

Books: the other good thing about spending endless hours on trains is the chance to get stuck into a juicy book. Last Sunday's trip back from the capital gave me the opportunity to blitz Piers Morgan's Don't You Know Who I Am? Disappointly, while he mentioned buying Press Gazette and then, a bit later, deciding not to attend its fabled Press Awards, he failed to write about the collapse of PG under his and Matthew Freud's ownership. It would have been interesting to hear his version of events but perhaps poor Piers felt it might be too painful to recall...