Shred my cred

I had a story published in a national paper today. As usual, I was chuffed to see my byline and popped out to the shop to buy a copy (I usually read the press online). On my return, I sifted through my emails and saw I had a Google Alert to say I'd been listed on NewsCred. I'd never heard of NewsCred before so naturally I toddled over there to have a look. It's a Web 2.0 site, still in beta, that picks up stories from all the main international newspapers and lets site members rate them. So far, so good.

Except that the ranking system is based on people voting one of two ways: Credit means you rate the story as credible and of good quality; Discredit means you consider it to be biased and factually inaccurate.

I saw that 8 people had already voted on my story, two of whom had chosen to discredit it. That would have been fair enough had I been writing a straight news story but in this case my feature was about a product, so of course there was going to be some bias in it - it's virtually impossible to appraise something and not come down on one side of it or the other. You look at the product from as many angles and viewpoints as possible, test it as much as you can and draw a conclusion. You like it, or you don't. Or you maybe say it has some good points but flag up the minuses while doing so.

Reviewing has been around since newspapers were invented. It doesn't matter what's being reviewed - opera, exhibitions, pop groups, restaurants or products of some sort. At some point the reviewer is going to bless it with a yay or a nay. It therefore seems ridiculous that NewsCred allows its users to "discredit" a story it's scooped up that is not hard news but a review of something because whichever way you slice, there will be bias in there.

In my favour, the product I wrote about was not thrust on me by some fawning PR desperate for some coverage. I stumbled across a mention of the product, was intrigued enough to look up the maker's website, liked what I saw, picked up the phone and asked nicely if I could have a sample and then started pitching once I'd tried it out and felt it deserved some coverage. I actually could find almost nothing bad to say about this particular product despite putting it through its paces.

So - track me down on on NewsCred and shoot me for writing a feature based on a product review.

What do you all think? Should NewsCred be able to discredit review features? Might it besmirch a journalist's otherwise good name and credibility for writing reviews?

Still no end in sight

I am SICK of hedge funds! I've worked eight hours solid today and I still have masses to do. The commissioning editor finally e-mailed me today with the missing style guide for the references section. I have successfully contracted this out to a trainee editor (which will save me several hours). I explained to the commissioning editor that the work was going to take even longer than expected - she'll be lucky to receive it by Tuesday lunchtime, at this rate. I have still have 30-odd pages of MS to edit, plus all the outstanding graphs, tables and illustrations. And, of course, I'll need to check over the edited references when they come back to me, and go through all my flagged-up queries and prepare an author query sheet.

I think I'll be cracking open a bottle of Moet when I finally sign off this project.

I had masses of interruptions today - my e-mail inbox was overflowing, for starters. Like many people, when that little symbol flashes in my system tray, I have to go look at what's coming in. If I don't, the symbol distracts me and disturbs my concentration. And besides, I don't want to miss anything really important, like the arrival of a missing style guide.

E-mail arrived from my graphic designer - the first "final" draft of the ad is ready for our client. I had a look at the PDF, approved it and rang him back so he could send it to the client. We had a quick chat about this and that, then rang off so we could both get on with work.

A chavvy guy rang me to ask about my services. It turned out he was writing his autobiography and wanted me to edit it. I gently explained that he needed to find an agent in order to secure a publisher - it would be unethical of me to take up to £2,000 off him to edit his book when he has no publishing deal. And besides, the publisher normally bears the cost of editing and proofreading. I told him how to find an agent and hung up.

Someone else offered me a free book on feature writing, which I accepted. The proviso is I have to write a review of it for some publication or other. Unpaid, no doubt. No problem, I'm happy to do that. I just hope the book is good.

Now I'm sitting here nattering with my beloved P, sipping a chilled sherry and trying to unwind for the weekend.

I'm going to try very hard not to think about work over the weekend, as the onslaught will resume at 8am on Monday morning...