Modern media: Necessary evil or saviour of democracy?

I sat in on the Media Inquiry in Melbourne this afternoon, and listened to the ever thoughtful Paul Chadwick.

It was an absorbing session, and whilst it is probably clear that the most likely outcome is some increased influence for the Press Council, and not much else, nevertheless the process seems to have been worthwhile. And, in fact, that outcome may be just about ideal.

Who wants more media regulation, anyway?

But amongst all the talk of the threats to democracy and the power of the media, it struck me that an important historical point has been lost.

Inquiries like this start from the point of view that the media is a necessary evil, that it's a loose cannon needing to be controlled or regulated in some way. The underlying theory is that some influence needs to be brought to bear against the worst excesses of greedy moguls or uncaring shareholders.

All of that may be a fair cop, guv. But it does overlook one glaring positive.

Since the rise of a global media in the second half of the twentieth century – whether that be international wire services, CNN, the BBC, blogs, Twitter or digital radio – we have lived in an Age of Communication.

Digital only defines the latter part of that age. So let’s not get hung up on “citizen journalism” or Twitter.

What struck me as I listened to the discussion this afternoon – particularly as Paul Chadwick, who is clearly a student of history, referenced aspects of the long cycle of media influence and its roots in pamphleteering – was that a key aspect of post-industrial revolution western democracy, up until the mid-twentieth century, was militaristic.

I’m not suggesting that things are particularly peaceful in all pockets of the globe at the moment, but within and between western democracies it is true to say there is no threat of imminent war. And when you contrast that with the first half of the twentieth century the difference is startling.

Right now Europe’s economy is under greater stress than it has been since the 1930’s. The US economy is marginally better. These zones have been the driving forces of economic growth for hundreds of years. And yes, we know the centre of influence is moving from West to East.

But the point is that before the rise of global media, these economic stresses – and the communication technologies of the day – resulted in an inward nationalistic mindset that led to devastating wars. Two world wars were fought, millions died. Today no one is predicting that will be repeated.

Of course there are many influences to which this political stability can be attributed, but it is worth acknowledging that one of the very important components is ... the media.

What's your Facebook strategy?

Most news organisations have Facebook pages that correlate with their brands. These pages may have tens of thousands of friends. Which is all well and good, but how much traffic is this delivering to news sites?

I'll bet it's not much, at least as a percentage of overall site traffic.

Yes, every eyeball counts and there's a good argument that says Facebook friends are more engaged readers than a user who surfs Google to a news story. But whilst having a Facebook presence is an essential requirement for online news publishers, I suspect publishers are getting themselves mired in another low return exercise and training readers to never even visit the "parent" news site.

Publishers have to use the social-networking giant more effectively than they currently do. If we don't, we can be sure Facebook will use us.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes no secret of the fact he wants media content, and lots of it.

“I hope that we can play a part in enabling … the companies that are out there producing this great content to become more social,” he said at an e-G8 forum in Paris earlier in the year. “We’re going to see a lot of the transformation in these industries over the next three, five years.”

Another way to look at it is that Facebook wants to become the "operating system of the web," as Mashable's Ben Parr puts it.

The recently unveiled new Facebook apps from publishers including Yahoo News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Gizmodo, and a number of others, are a clear step in that direction.

The apps will tie in with Facebook’s new Timeline user interface as well as the new Ticker sidebar to let users read news stories within Facebook and easily share their reading histories.

It’s worth emphasising that these apps keep the reader wholly within the Facebook domain. They make no effort, other than via brand awareness, to steer the reader towards the originating masthead.

That so many traditional and online publishers have given the go ahead for their content to be fully replicated within Facebook, sacrificing page views on their own websites, is a big coup for Facebook. And it smacks of publisher desperation.

Washington Post CEO Donald Graham said in a statement that his company expects to see better user engagement and ultimately more reading activity by putting its stories within Facebook. “If you know that several of your friends have read a story, you’ll be more interested in it. We encourage people to try it out with their friends and keep up-to-date on the news,” he said.

That is a very brave move. And more than a little ironic given that not so long ago some publishers were accusing Google of stealing their content. (Google, by contrast, delivers a large percentage of traffic to news sites.)

Either way, publishers need to ask themselves who is really benefitting here. Facebook apps, such as the Washington Post’s and The Guardian’s simply play straight into Zuckerberg’s hands by lending their brand to the goal of keeping users within the Facebook universe.

The compounding factors to date for publishers, in product terms, are the disappointing results from iPad apps and the apparent failure of Google+ to steal market share from Facebook.

Whilst it is still early days, all Google+ seems to have done is prod Facebook into fasttracking its product releases and entrenching its 750 million users even more firmly within the site.

Google+ is a fine product, but as a social networking site it doesn’t offer anything to compel users away from Facebook. One social network is plenty for most people, and as long as Facebook keeps a focus on user experience, and manages the privacy debate maturely, it will be hard to displace.

iPad apps are a slightly different story.

Apps just haven’t taken off as many expected they would. Given the level of investment required to build and maintain news apps that can attract paying subscribers the question has to be asked whether that effort should be directed towards improving and marketing web sites.

Apart from the potential channel conflict that a news iPad app sets up, most sites already render adequately on a tablet browser.

Perhaps, now is a time for some different thinking. Instead of driving ahead with news apps, focus on optimising news web sites for access from any device and limit tablet apps to classifieds and transaction products.

And get back to figuring out how to outsmart Facebook.

Working for Rupert

In 2005 I was appointed editor of www.news.com.au. In November that year I was invited to attend the News Ltd editors conference in Adelaide, where I was briefly introduced to Rupert Murdoch. It was the only time I met the big chief, though it wasn't the only time I felt his influence.

The editors conference is an annual, or twice annual event held in different capital cities where News Ltd has metro daily papers. It brings together all the editors of the metro and regional newspapers - as well as the most senior columnists - and over a couple of days of presentations and workshops, thrashes out the critical issues shared across the Group.

The headline agenda is set by the CEO and then fleshed out by Corporate Affairs chief Greg Baxter and his office. The topics are inevitably current and often controversial. Debates go on all day and well into the night over dinner and many drinks at the most expensive restaurants in town.

It's a big deal within News Ltd, and it's fair to say that in and of itself it's a positive thing. But it's not something you'll see reported anywhere, so outside speculation always tends towards assuming the worst.

I attended a few of these conferences during my time at News and invariably they were focused on how to manage the transition from a print centric to a digital world.

The Adelaide conference in November 2005 was otherwise notable for a couple of reasons. Rupert was in town to open the new Adelaide Advertiser building, and the conference coincided with the inaugural News Awards of which the Murdochs were very supportive.

I was scheduled to speak on the morning of the second day. My brief was to describe the online opportunity for News in Australia in terms of new audience and new approaches to doing journalism. There was real interest at the most senior management levels in trying to come to grips with the implications of digital for every aspect of newsroom organisation, reporting and news production.

The other key point of interest at that time was Myspace. News Corp had just paid $580 million for the social networking site but very few people in the Australian arm of the business knew what it was, how it worked, or how it made money. For Australian print executives it was a confusing and even threatening addition to the business, but the signal was loud and clear: digital is the way of the future.

The session took place in the boardroom situated on the top floor of the glittering new Advertiser building, opening on to a roof garden with views of the city. Twenty five people sat around a large U-shaped table. It was a warm, sunny late spring day.

After opening comments and introductions from CEO John Hartigan and then my immediate boss (one of the sharpest minds I've had the privilege of working with), it was my turn to speak.

At that stage I'd been with the company for about three months. I'd had some experience editing a major news site, having been editor of theage.com.au for the previous three years, so I felt confident about what I had to say albeit somewhat daunted by the audience I was addressing.

There was a web connection in the room, so I was able to project examples of online news coverage from a range of different outlets covering the London bombings, Hurricane Katrina, and other major news events of recent months. A the time there was a clear trend toward user generated, or audience contribution and it was something I was really keen to get working at news.com.au.

Another bugbear of mine at the time was linking out. I was directing my team to put at least one external link into each article. Australian news sites still don't do enough of this, but at news.com.au we were trying to use the medium to give our readers background or further information that would otherwise not run in the actual copy of an article. The web is perfect for this.

And one of the sites we used - with caution - was Wikipedia. I emphasized caution because there are some topics you cannot rely on Wikipedia for, but by and large historical or science based topics, for example, tend to be fairly safe sources of basic information.

In today's terms I was stating the bleeding obvious. But to an audience of News editorial executives in 2005 the whole issue of audience participation was a bit confronting. And as soon as I mentioned Wikipedia arms shot up around the room.

Chris Mitchell, editor of The Australian, was the first to object. For Chris it was a legal issue. "I don't like Wikipedia," he said. "I have my lawyers looking at it."

It was difficult to respond to that, and of course Mitchell wasn't looking for a response from me. I've occasionally wondered since whether The Australian's legal team has had any luck against Wikipedia ...

The second objection came from Daily Telegraph columnist, Piers Akerman. For Piers it was a journalistic issue.

"I don't like Wikipedia," he said. "They're not journalists. We are the journalists and editors. We are the ones who check and verify information. Wikipedia is unreliable and full of mistakes."

I replied that a) the Wikipedia model has a strong self-correction mechanism, b) we used it very carefully, mostly on non-controversial topics, and c) the scientific journal Nature had just published the initial results of a comparison with Encyclopedia Britannica which put Wikipedia in a favorable light against the venerable Britannica.

Nevertheless, Piers seemed unconvinced.

The third objection came from Herald Sun columnist, Andrew Bolt. For Andrew it was a personal issue. "I don't like Wikipedia," he said. "They write bad things about me."

Legal and journalistic complaints were one thing, but this was something altogether different. I wasn't sure how to respond, but rashly decided to pull up Andrew's wikipedia entry live on the projector screen.

Suffice to say the entry was long but bland, and there was nothing in the first few paragraphs that could be immediately described as insulting or biased. Luckily for me.

As I was wrapping up my presentation Rupert came in and stood at the back of the room by the tables that were laid put for morning tea. Afterwards we broke for coffee and biscuits. Rupert mingled with old colleagues like Terry McCrann and was introduced to the few newbies like myself who were present.

Following morning tea, Rupert addressed the room. He spoke for about 30 minutes without any notes. He was quick to say that digital is the way of the future.

"As you know," he said, "we've recently purchased Myspace and we will continue to look for other suitable acquisitions.

"The web is the great disruptive technology of our time. It's where our audiences are moving to, and it's where we have to be.

"When I get up in the morning I can check the news from all over the world. I am constantly amazed by the rich variety of offerings on the web. Sites such as Wikipedia ..."

At which point I looked down the table and saw Andrew Bolt put his head in his hands, and Piers Ackerman nod wisely in agreement.

John Hartigan, whom I was sitting next to, leaned over and whispered, "I'll bet you're glad he said that!"

Indeed, I was.

Chris Lilley is neither Jesus nor the anti-Christ

Chris Lilley polarizes opinion, but as an artist he has more in common with David Williamson than Austen Tayshus or the team at Working Dog.

In today's Sunday Age Bruce Guthrie is indignant about Chris Lilley's tastelessness and questions whether the the ABC has breached its charter by airing Angry Boys. Although he does still think Mr Lilley is "supremely talented".

If he was a letter writer he'd be "Outraged of Moonee Ponds" and we'd all just roll our eyes. But Mr Guthrie's a paid columnist and you've got to wonder about manufactured froth and bubble such as this.

Still, he knows there's something going on here. He can sense that what Lilley is doing is interesting, but he doesn't quite know what that is. So he has a bet each way, which is hardly guaranteed to get the passions flowing.

There's been a lot written about Lilley's new show, much of it glowing. But a good deal of it perplexed about the nature of his comedy.

One of the most intelligent critiques of Angry Boys comes from Waleed Aly: 

"Typically from Lilley, there's plenty of discomfort here. His bigoted characters are extreme but presented with an unnerving realism and an editorial silence that raises tricky questions."

Waleed hits the nail on the head with the reference to realism. Lilley's social commentary is sharply observed, and  the work is all the more powerful for it.

Lilley addresses this directly in a recent interview with FHM:

FHM: Is Australia becoming more humourless and uptight? 
CL: I don’t know… I’m not sure if I want to make a statement about that. You might be right.
FHM: I’m sure I’m right. It’s why you’re so successful, because your shows remind people of the way we used to be. We used to be unafraid.
CL: I see what you mean. But I also think there’s this really patriotic thing going on in Australia at the moment. That’s what I was trying to tap into with Daniel and his Aussie flag obsession, and the Southern Cross business. Younger people really identify with that now: you’re white, you’re Aussie and you’ve got to have your Southern Cross tattoo. When I was younger that didn’t exist. It was almost embarrassing – you didn’t want to be associated with that old school “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” thing. It was cringeworthy – but for some reason now it’s back.

One of the mistakes reviewers and commentators seem to be making about Lilley's work is that they insist on reading him through the prism of "comedy". As a writer or actor he's regularly described as a comic genius, but he then confounds these assumptions by not being drop dead funny all the time.

And that reaction is not about his comedy being more or less sophisticated, or the audience being more or less receptive.

As a playwright David Williamson has similarly confounded critics throughout his career. His comedies and dramas are always character driven, but the characters are often types or stereotypes. Lilley is dealing in the same kind of material, albeit in a different milieu.

The one thing on which all commentators concur is that Lilley is a big talent. As David Williamson might agree, it's a talent that deserves a better class of criticism from our cultural elites.

The app is not the savior of news

The iPad is now one Christmas old and with the benefit of more devices in more hands publishers are readjusting their projections and re-evaluating the success metrics.

The weight of expectation of a whole industry is a lot for one small device to bear. So how is it holding up?

The iPad is doing just fine, thank you very much. But it doesn't look like it is going to singlehandedly save the media publishing industry any time soon.

To get a feel for how apps are being received by consumers, I did a small, informal survey of recent iPad converts, including a few longer term users. Of the ten people I spoke to, all are high consumers of news in other formats, and range in age from their twenties to seventies.

The verdict, unsurprisingly, is that everyone loves their iPad. Some use it more than others, but each said they were spending more time online as a result of it.

But they remain underwhelmed by the available news apps and the device hasn't made any real difference to their media consumption habits yet, nor has it convinced them to pay for news where they had previously not been doing so.

There appear to be two elements at work here. One is that the iPad provides an adequate web browsing experience. It's not perfect, and there are plenty of sites that, for example use Flash extensively, that don't work properly on the iPad's Safari browser. But by and large it is a satisfactory news browsing experience.

The other element is that news apps just aren't up to scratch. Most of the survey sample had tried one or other of the available paid news apps but had dropped the subscription after an initial period of trialling it, making do with the available free versions.

The complaints were fairly consistent. All felt that while they were willing to pay for news, they resented having to pay for something they felt was sub-standard The complaints ranged from "It doesn't have everything that's in the paper" to "It's too slow, the news is out of date" to "It looks too much like a paper", there was some criticism of the technology as slow or buggy.

Breadth and timeliness of news delivery was the most important element. The web has taught consumers to expect instant breaking news, and the expectation is that the app will deliver the same, as well as being a luxurious reading experience. The app is seen as potentially combining the best attributes of print and online.

Early iPad news app usage data pointed to early morning and late evening activity. I expect we will see that change as the tablet finds its way into the routine of people's lives. The expectation follows that we should see increased audience numbers and more frequent session times.

But that puts a spotlight back on the real motivation of publishers in producing iPad apps. Are publishers still defending print circulations, or are we honestly trying to build new audiences with our iPad apps? My small survey group felt the publishers really want them to go back to buying the newspaper. Why else, they argue, would an app look and feel so much like a print product, or even in one case look exactly like a replica of a newspaper?

And why would it be so slow with the news? Queensland's flood and cyclone disasters were a case in point. Major rolling news stories were not available on some news apps as fast as they were on news web sites. Paying customers were right to feel ripped off.

Much was written in 2010 about publishers' embracing the tablet as a way of reviving the habit of paying for news. At the same time the consensus was that the new offering needed to be compelling enough to encourage the habit. With a little bit of time and plenty of apps in the app store, it is painfully obvious that few, if any of the news apps currently available are compelling enough to attract and keep paying readers.

The message from the market is - Yes, we'll pay for it, but it had better be good.

First published in the PANPA Bulletin February 2011.

Resuming transmission ... and changing direction

I finished up at APN yesterday after three and a half years. It has been a great ride, and very productive. I feel I am leaving a business quite different from the one I joined.

Digitally it is well positioned, with traffic growing and ending the year with the strongest revenue numbers ever. Really terrific YoY growth. The immediate challenge for the business now is meeting client demand and ensuring audience growth continues. But that's not a unique situation. It's an indicator of success.

During the past three and a half years we have established a whole new network of regional news sites that is now a genuine competitor as a network buy to FD and NDM. Obviously, the APN Digital coverage is specific in geography. But it is 10% of the national market that no one else reaches, so it is very valuable.

And this year we did the agency deal with Fairfax to sell classifieds in Qld and Northern NSW, which kicked off in August. I think that is a classic win win.

We also set up some pretty ambitious new products - such as finda - that are set to continue the growth story and extend into new audiences.

So I feel satisfied I am leaving the digital part of the business well positioned and primed for further growth.

And I am pleased to say that we brought some very good digital people into the business. The kind of talent and expertise that will enable APN to build a new business culture, and continue the growth trajectory that digital has been on.

As for me, I'll watch with interest. But right now I'm looking forward to having a break and spending some time with my family.

Happy Christmas, and here's to 2011 ...

Customisation and news sites

In early March Fairfax Media relaunched www.stuff.co.nz incorporating a degree of user enabled customisation previously not seen in New Zealand news sites. Below is a few thoughts about personalised news services from Darren Burden and David Higgins.

Darren is Director of News and Sport at Fairfax Digital in Australia (he was not involved in the Stuff relaunch). David Higgins is editor of News.com.au which was the first major Australian news site to incorporate broad based customisation.

Q: Any general comments about the style of personalisation we've seen on news.com.au and now stuff.co.nz?

DARREN: Personalisation has been the flavour of the month for as long as I can remember. The thing is that people like the idea of personalisation, but very few could be bothered to actually use the features.

DAVID: Technically – I think I have this right – News.com.au and Stuff.co.nz are examples of customisation, where visitors can change a website to fit their own needs, eg. putting sport up top and entertainment down the bottom. Personalisation is where a site watches a visitor’s behaviour and changes itself to fit that individual’s needs. With care, I think both are good ways of building loyalty, but customisation/personalisation is only one element of a digital strategy.

DARREN: For a news site there are other limitations such as balancing the customisation above the fold, or being able to add components of interest such as email or IM clients. This type of functionality also impedes the “serendipity effect” of being spontaneously directed around a website using devices such as the Top 5 stores, or most viewed videos. I do like the idea however of localisation – this makes a lot of sense. For example the work that Stuff.co.nz has done with weather. We need to get cracking on that concept for all Fairfax sites.

DAVID: For me there are five key reasons why digital journalism attracts people over print. Indulge the alliteration, but I’ll call them the 5Cs: cost (it’s free), convenience (it’s on your work computer or phone), currency (it’s up to date), connection (it’s not just a story it’s a discussion), and customisation (I can make the news suit me).

Q: So, David, has your experience shown that users treat News.com.au differently as a result of the format changes?

DAVID: Just over a third of visitors have in some way used our customisation features to change News.com.au to suit their tastes. Of those, about 40 per cent have moved content modules around on the page. The most popular customisation has been to move sport up to the top of the page. The second most popular has been to move the tech section – which appears at the bottom of the page by default – up to the top. We have seen engagement and session times increase at a higher-than-industry-average rates since introducing the technology.

Would we go to the next level and introduce an iGoogle or NetVibes approach allowing the construction of a totally customised experience? I doubt it because – being a big fan of NetVibes – I know Web customisation is more useful when pulling in feeds from all over the Web, not just from a single news site. Darren and I both agree that news sites are more likely to focus on further enabling users to export news content into third party customised environments.

Q: Darren, I know you have some thoughts on the degrees of personalisation that could work in different circumstances, could you give us either some examples or a rundown of what you see as ideal levels of personalisation for news sites?

DARREN: There are some personalisation techniques that could work really well – initiated from a product point of view. As I mentioned before, people don’t necessarily want to do these actions themselves, but if the product automatically does it for them it makes for a much better experience. Take for example Amazon, who combine behavioural knowledge from an individual – that is what they have bought, with intersections of the crowd to produce suggestions and recommendations. There are other things we can do such as not show you the same video/gallery/story on the home page if you have already clicked on it. The research that we do is consistent - people are time poor, they scan stories, they want breaking news. We should be showing you the stories you are interested in based on your past behaviour – a more up to date and personal experience if you like. We’ll need to change some mindsets and work practices to achieve this – for example the editorial team who currently choose the top eight stories may have to pick the top 25 to ensure we have the selection we need. Jonathan Rosenberg, Snr VP of Product Management at Google talks in much more depth about behavioural personalisation on his blog.

The second level of personalization is really more for readers who want to take our brands/content and build their own views in Facebook, NetVibes, blogs etc. This would entail creating better hooks into our content, but there are commercial challenges around this kind of personalisation which we would need to consider carefully. Nic Newman, Future Media Controller at the BBC recently indicated that they are also going to do more of this kind personalisation/syndication - but BBC don't have the same commercial challenges as public companies.

Q:In that context it’s interesting that The Guardian has just launched Open Platform. Given that we're still at the early, or even experimental stage, of this sort of formatting for news, how far do you think it can be pushed?

DARREN: I think a lot of it starts from some of the ideas already discussed. It can be pushed as far as the limitations allow it. Some of the limitations are commercial, budgetary or the capability of your technical teams. We are pretty interested in making sure we build functionality or features that really add value to the product, rather than just being a good idea.

Q: What about the editing process? Do you think we will see news stories being edited differently as a result of user information generated by personalisation?

DAVID: We certainly edit our home pages and features sections based on behaviour. News-editing is a lot more scientific these days and while there is still an element of “gut-feel”, most editors are more conscious of what stories and angles their audience are interested in. Editors now have incredible real-time data about their audiences and would be foolish not to be making the most of this.

DARREN: Creating and subbing the content would not change – the story will still be the story. The changes are more likely to manifest in layout and content management. For example rather than choosing one lead image, we may select up to 10 that could change depending on behaviour as discussed previously. The types of systems that support this type of content need to be smart and robust – they need to learn as they go along, and above all be easy, fast and flexible for the editorial teams.

DAVID: Current content management systems are not smart enough to efficiently edit stories for individuals – and clearly this will never be a manual task -- but I don’t see why this could not be possible in the future with smarter technology. The positive thing about the disappearance of "competitive barriers to entry" in our industry is the increased focus on innovation, which we all recognise as crucial to our prosperity.

Q: From a commercial perspective, what's the immediate upside? Does it increase the value of specific inventory? Do you think we'll see an upswing in targeted advertising?

DARREN: Clearly any product investment should have a commercial impact. In some of the scenarios above we would see an increase in page impressions as people find more content they are interested in. We would also see a corresponding increase in time on site which is a good indication of engagement – one of the key metrics for smart advertisers. After all it makes sense that the longer someone sticks around, the more chances they have of seeing ads. The engagement metric is also an indicator of quality. People don’t tend to stick around when the content is crap.

The other commercial aspect is really in behavioural advertising – one of the fastest growing segments of the online pie. We expect it to be a premium space as you need to have quite good data to provide this kind of service. It could be as simple as showing specific car ads to people who have been to Drive, or it could be show my ad to readers who are between 18-24, who've visited Drive in the last 7 days and who live at home. There will be an upswing, but creating the infrastructure to deal with this will be a challenge for publishers.

DAVID: Most of the current work News Digital Media is doing in this area is on the commercial side. NDM recently introduced an Audience Targeting product that allows clients to target their ads to people based on their browsing behaviour. For example we can now serve car ads to people who are interested in cars -- even when they are not in a motoring section. This not only makes advertising more efficient for clients, it also makes it more useful to visitors. Visitors remain anonymous of course.

Another US newspaper closes

Denver, Colorado: The Rocky Mountain News ceased production Friday February 27.

Online news in 1981

All eight newspaper sites, publishing via dial up, were only weeks old at the time. It took over two hours to receive the full text of the paper over the phone line ... at $5 per hour!

"This is an experiment," says David Cole of the San Francisco Examiner. "We're trying to figure out what it's going to mean to us as editors and reporters and what it means to the home user." (No office users back then.)

"And we're not in it to make money."

*!*

"We're probably not going to lose a lot, but we aren't going to make much either."

An elderly 'home user' (1:35) - who must be 70 if he's a day - really gets it, though.

Says Mr Halloran, "I think it's the future of the type of interrogation the individual will give to the newspaper."

Working the night desk

Margaret Simons has been all over the Michael Backman incident at The Age this week. Her column in Crikey today discussing how the paper could publish a piece like that in error reminded me of the scene in The Thick Of It (Spinners & Losers episode) where the night desk at the Daily Mail is trying to follow Labour hacks' twists and turns in positioning a replacement for the recently departed PM.

Night Editor: You know our coverage tonight has either been wrong or guesswork. Which was wrong. So all we have now is a story shaped hole.
Angela: Seriously, your blood sugar's low and it makes you very irritable.
Night Editor: No. What makes me very irritable, Angela, is having no f*&*ing story and having to fill an entire newspaper with just f*&*ing prepositions.

(Yes, I know the examples are different, and the TV version of the night desk bears no resemblance to a real newsroom ...)